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The performing rights organization that represents songwriters and composers blasted Internet radio service Pandora, saying the company is "trying every trick in the book" to underpay its members.

"Songwriters and composers are struggling in the digital economy to be paid fairly for their creative work," said Paul Williams, president of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, or ASCAP, in a statement. "Pandora is trying every trick in the book to brazenly and unconscionably underpay and take advantage of the creative labor that produces the core offering of their business—music written by individual songwriters and composers." Pandora Assistant General Counsel Christopher Harrison accused ASCAP of engaging in "discriminatory treatment" against the Internet radio service. Harrison also revealed that Pandora purchased an FM radio station in South Dakota so it could qualify for the same licensing terms with ASCAP as its other Internet radio competitors—such as Clear Channel-owned iHeartRadio—which would result in lower licensing fees. ASCAP licenses access to the song catalogs of songwriters and composers, which are owned by music publishers. ASCAP members write the music and lyrics of songs.


Songwriters, composers hit back against Pandora Why Pandora bought an FM radio station (Harrison’s op-ed)
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Amid the debate over government surveillance, there's been an assumption: Young people don't care about privacy. Turns out, the generation that puts much of the "social" in social networking is much more complex when determining what personal information they want to share.

Sure, they're as likely as ever to post photos of themselves online, as well as their location and even phone numbers, say those who track their high-tech habits. But as they approach adulthood, they're also getting more adept at hiding and pruning their online lives. Despite their propensity for sharing, many young adults also are surprisingly big advocates for privacy — in some cases, more than their elders.


Privacy — the online generation wants it
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So that seemingly smoking gun e-mail from Apple CEO Steve Jobs to SVP Eddy Cue in the Department of Justice’s e-book price fixing case against Apple? The one that appeared to undermine the company’s argument that it was indifferent to the pricing model publishers used with other retailers like Amazon? According to new evidence submitted by Apple, it’s hardly warm, let alone smoking.

The document cited by the government is simply a draft message that was never sent. What Apple entered into evidence is the final version of that message, the one that was actually sent to Cue, and it differs significantly from that apparently damning draft. Crucially, it does not contain any language suggesting publishers need to push Amazon to the agency model Apple wanted for its own e-book store. Indeed, it expressly acknowledges that publishers might continue their wholesale pricing arrangements with Amazon.


DOJ Misfires on Jobs Email in Apple E-Book Case — It Was a Discarded Draft
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The government’s antitrust case over e-book pricing reaches a crucial stage as a key Apple executive takes the stand to try to convince a federal judge he didn’t lead an illegal scheme with publishers to fix prices.

Eddie Cue, called “the chief ringleader of the conspiracy” by a Justice Department lawyer, is scheduled to testify in the Manhattan civil trial of the government’s case against Apple. Cue, 48, is Apple’s central negotiator in dealing with the owners of music, magazines, books, movies and television shows. His role will be highlighted as he testifies about leading talks with the six biggest U.S. publishers in late 2009 and early 2010. “His testimony is going to be the single most important piece of testimony in this case,” said Ankur Kapoor of Constantine Cannon LLP in New York, an antitrust lawyer who isn’t involved in the case. “He’s alleged to be right in the center of the conspiracy between Apple and the publishers.” The government claims Cue prodded five of the six publishers to raise e-book prices and put pressure on Amazon, the No. 1 e-book seller, to abandon its pricing model, in the weeks before Apple entered the electronic book market with the introduction of the iPad.


Apple’s Cue Is Key to Defense of E-Book Price-Fixing Case
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[Commentary] Steve Jobs is remembered as the Thomas Edison of Silicon Valley, but Washington's trust busters would like to add one more legacy: That the Apple cofounder tried to suppress competition as the "ringmaster" of a conspiracy to fix digital book prices that nonetheless caused prices to fall.

At least that's the legal theory behind the federal show trial against Apple that got underway last week, which is incoherent even by the standards of modern antitrust. The Justice Department contends that Apple plotted with five publishers to artificially inflate the costs of books in 2009-2010. At the time, prior to the existence of the tablet device market that Jobs created with the iPad, Apple did not sell e-books. Amazon sold nine of every 10. Justice claims Jobs then forced Amazon and every other e-book distributor to adopt a new e-book pricing model that harmed consumers. Yet the average retail price for "trade" e-books has since dropped to $7.34 from $7.97, and Amazon's Kindle is still the industry leader with Apple trailing in third. Over the same period readers bought 447% more e-books, and they can choose from dozens of tablets for titles and other media content.


Throwing the Book at Apple
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[Commentary] With the word that "NewsHour" was shutting down offices and laying off employees, it's time to ask the question: Just how much of the this one-time PBS bedrock is actually left?

In fact, let's go a step further and ask if it is even accurate to call it a nightly newscast anymore -- and if what's left is worth trying to save? I know I've been avoiding asking those questions for at least four years even though they begged to be asked. Now they demand answers. What the "NewsHour" has become is a one-hour broadcast that relies mostly on original reporting done by other people, who the producers then try to bring on the show to talk about their stories. I'm sorry, Jeffrey Brown interviewing a New York Times reporter about a story she or he broke is not a nightly newscast -- not in any sense of what they do on CBS with Scott Pelley or ABC with Diane Sawyer every night. It's more like a cable talk show -- or a radio talk show with a camera showing the interviewer and interviewee sitting across from each other.


Is it time to quit being nice about what 'NewsHour' has become?
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Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) continued his campaign against pay-channel bundling, penning a letter to acting Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn pushing for the option to purchase individual pay channels.

Sen McCain, who last month introduced legislation on the matter, said forcing consumers to buy channels they're not interested in is wrong and that "action should be taken." The legislation, dubbed the Television Consumer Freedom Act, would incentivize distributors to offer individual channel purchasing options and would still allow for programming tiers, Sen McCain said in the letter, published on his government web site. "If the MVPDs [multichannel video programming distributors, aka, cable and satellite providers] are right, and the current tiered programming model is the best value for consumers, then the programmers who bundle their television channels and the MVPDs that offer tiers to consumers should not be afraid of an a la carte option for consumers."


John McCain Writes to FCC Urging a la Carte Cable McCain urges FCC to shake up video market (The Hill)
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Ken Solomon, the chief executive of Tennis Channel, thought until late last month that he was on his way to winning a big and lengthy legal battle — one that would greatly enhance the channel’s business. He believed that Comcast would soon make Tennis Channel as widely available on its cable systems as Golf Channel and NBC Sports Network, which it owns.

But last month, a three-judge panel of a federal appellate court ruled that Comcast had not discriminated against Tennis Channel by giving it far less distribution than Golf Channel and NBC Sports Network, and was not obliged to expand its availability. Solomon was in Paris for the French Open when the decision was handed down. Hours later, frustrated at the dramatic reversal in the case, he sent his staff an angry, meandering e-mail that was punctuated with the language of sexual assault. Solomon likened the judges’ decision — and, apparently the difficulty of dealing with Comcast — to “being raped by a brutal captor, finally winning in a long and painful public court trial,” and, “on appeal years later from a pre-decided Mad Hatter of a court asking you, the victim, to produce video to prove that it ever happened.” The ruling, Solomon wrote, was “a travesty of justice, wholly wrong and unfair, and just plain hard to believe.”


Tennis Channel Executive Rants After Losing a Court Ruling
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France’s insistence on protecting its state-sponsored film and television industry could create snags in the European Union’s preparations for trade talks with the United States, according to trade officials.

Ministers and diplomats were trying to head off a showdown at a meeting planned for June 14 by the Union’s 27 trade ministers. The ministers plan to decide whether to give the European Commission, the Union’s executive arm, formal authority to start negotiating a trans-Atlantic trade pact that President Barack Obama opened the way for in February.


France Resists U.S. Trade Talks Over TV and Film Concerns
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Private television channels in Greece suspended their news coverage as of 6 a.m. June 12 in solidarity with employees of the state broadcaster, ERT, which was shut down by the government, while newspaper headlines conveyed the shock felt by many Greeks at the closing of a 75-year-old institution that had employed 2,900 people.

“An Execution to Please the Troika,” read one in the center-left newspaper Eleftherotypia, a reference to the trio of creditors — the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank — whose representatives are back in Athens this week to audit Greece’s progress in sticking to conditions attached to the country’s multibillion-euro bailout. Thomas Dedes, 67, a Greek retiree, said that a day spent chasing underground news reports and racing across online video channels and digital platforms like Twitter and Facebook reminded him of the unsavory days when Greece was ruled by a military dictatorship.


News Finds New Ways to Flow as Greek State Broadcaster Is Shut Strikes Called in Greece to Protest Closure of Public Broadcaster (WSJ)