Corrected: I really must stop believing some news sources. Contrary to what Revolution magazine reported from its own conference, Blue State isn’t retained by London 2012 either “in any capacity”, the Games’ new media head Alex Balfour tells us in our comments... Earlier: Thomas Gensemer, the founder of the Blue…

State-funded broadcasters can spend their money to launch online services - as long as new services pass the same public value tests applied to TV and radio equivalents, says the European Commission. Right now, EC rules say public service broadcasters can be state-funded - but these broadcasters’ online expansionism has…

If the stories of other file-sharing firms that sold out are any indication, Pirate Bay’s move to sell itself and go legit might not play out so well. Here’s what happened to some of its peer-to-peer predecessors that were put up for sale: Company: Scour Buyer: CenterSpan Sale Price: $9…

The 2004 and 2008 US elections pushed boundaries in online campaign strategy - but how well stacked are UK parties to follow America’s lead? Views shared by the red and blue slides at Activate ‘09 suggest one group’s keenness to step up - and a strategic schism between both camps…

It’s a thumbs up from the European Commission: the proposed merger of Tiscali’s UK broadband business and Carphone Warehouse can now take place as planned.

Swedish publicly listed software company Global Gaming Factory X (GFF) says it wants to buy The Pirate Bay SEK60 million (£4.7 million) and will begin compensating copyright ownersfor material its users find and download. GGF announced today said it will also buy P2P technology company Peerialism and plans “to launch…

By Bobbie Johnson:Facebook is hiring lobbyists to push its agenda on internet privacy and data sharing in Brussels and Washington, as the social networking site attempts to increase its influence with authorities around the world. The company has appointed Richard Allan, who was previously the head of European regulatory affairs…

—Rapidshare appeal: The German file-sharing site is appealing its €24 million fine from a Hamburg court, in a case brought by German collecting society GEMA. Rapidshare CEO Bobby Chang says GEMA is trying to “turn back time” by suing the site. From P2P-blog.com. —IAB games council: The UK’s Internet Advertising…

Online news aggregator Moreover is considering taking legal action against the Newspaper Licensing Agency in response to plans to impose a levy on re-distribution of online newspaper articles. paidContent:UK understands more commercial aggregators may also explore action against what they see as a direct attempt to compromise their business model.…

—Irish music piracy: They warned they would, and now they have. The four major labels are suing Irish ISPs BT (NYSE: BT) and UPC to force them to implement a “three strikes” anti-piracy measure, FT.com reports. It worked against Eircom, which relented and agreed out of court to the practice…

The BBC’s director-general Mark Thompson says there is “no evidence” the corporation is stifling commercial publishers’ efforts to monetise their online products and that the BBC’s huge online presence can help the online economy by spreading awareness. In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s The Media Show on Wednesday, interviewer…

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) executives will answer charges of criminal defamation in a Milan court on Tuesday, stemming from a three-minute Google Video of a boy being bullied for having Down Syndrome. The four execs are chief legal officer David Drummond, privacy chief Peter Fleischer (pictured), former CFO George Reyes (now…

When we gave Lord Carter’s mammoth Digital Britain report a qualified thumb up, we went against the crowd. Much of the online reaction was rather negative - Linda Spurdle, an online hub manager at Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery, summed it up… View LSpurdle’s tweet

An Italian court has ordered 54 people behind illegal music download sites to pay more than €2.4 million (£2 million) in damages for copyright infringement following a six-year investigation. The case was first brought against various music download sites in 2003 by the Federation Against Music Piracy—which represents all four…

Many music services have been dropping DRM to make their wares more popular, now speculation says Nokia (NYSE: NOK) is about to do the same. This thin story at Mobile-Ent.biz cites “sources” as saying Nokia will remove copy locks from Nokia Music Store in favour of MP3 later this year,…

Another day, another major label legal challenge… Elio Leoni-Sceti’s EMI has filed a lawsuit against Florida-based music streaming site Grooveshark, as AllThingsD reports. The site currently offers tracks from all four majors and has escaped the attention of their lawyers, until the suit was filed in New York in May.…

Lord Carter of Barnes has unleashed his Digital Britain paper on the world, but the media exec formerly known as Stephen is standing down as communication, technology and broadcasting minister this summer. That got us thinking: what should the policymeister do next? Here are some suggestions...

Buried in the 245-page Digital Britain report (page 118), we found a little-mentioned section that may worry online services which re-transmit some live TV channels… Public-service channels from BBC, ITV (LSE: ITV), C4, Five and S4C have not granted carriage deals to services like Zattoo and TVCatchUp. Instead, they operate…

January’s interim Digital Britain report fell flat, like jelly on lino, because it lacked detail and certainty. We joined the criticism - but, perhaps we forgot at the time, all policy is iterative, consultative and must start somewhere. January was Lord Carter’s opening gambit; he took the industry’s pulse and,…