It used to be that artists rebelled against the system, the government, the breadheads and The Man, but artists signed to Sony in Japan are fighting their label’s decision not to make their songs available through the iTunes Music Store.
Bravely battling for his rights to, err, ensure maximum return on his product, Sony-signed rock musician Motoharu Sano has made a brave stance and made some of his songs available on Apple’s service, saying, “It is an individual’s freedom where that person chooses to listen to music. I want to deliver my music wherever my listeners are.”
Sony Music spokesman Yasushi Ide was unimpressed, saying that Sano is no longer considered “a Sony artist,” with future negotiations deciding whether his recordings under the Sony label will be offered at iTunes or not.
The outcome will depend on each contract, and talks are continuing, Sano added.
iTunes has proved an enormous hit in Japan, with customers clamoring to download over a million songs in just four days.
With several Japanese labels, notably Sony, failing to reach a deal with Apple, artists signed to those labels look set to miss out on the lucrative download market.
Talks between the two electronic giants Sony and Apple are believed to be continuing to resolve the problem.
Apple’s closed DRM system is believed to be a bone of contention, with Sony thought to have asked iTunes to provide downloads in its own ATRAC format, compatible with its Network Walkman range of portable players.
For the time being however, Sony’s failure to provide a credible alternative to the iTunes service looks set to continue to cause friction between their record company and artists.
A couple of stories have been circulating about the BBC of late, both concerning their adoption of digital TV. 
Sony BMG’s global digital business president Thomas Hesse was full of optimism about the emerging opportunities brought about by digital distribution channels such as iTunes and ringtones. 
The Sony bigwig suggested that the record industry could learn from the movie studios where carefully-timed “release windows” have helped maximise commercial opportunities for new films. 
We’ve all known for a long time that TV as we knew-and-loathed-it was under pressure, as people discovered there were things more rewarding in their lives than passively sitting in a darkened room, being bathed in light from a box in the corner of the room, watching whatever the channel controller decided to ‘entertain’ them with. 
In 2003 the BBC did some far more interesting research in this area. Of course they found that numbers of hours watched dropped, but what we found significant was that those hours that were being spent in front of the TV, weren’t dedicated to watching it. 
Let’s start this week’s news with some nice, old-fashioned, technological paranoia: As a teenager, you start to realise that giving everyone your mobile number, letting people know where you live and freely handing out your email address can be a bad thing. Imagine my surprise then when I found out that the Australian government had 
DRM on motherboards
In other news: After years of Apple thinking themselves obviously superior by having just the one mouse button, and after years of jokes about how Mac users are inferior because they can’t use more than the one button, Apple has gone back and decided to bring out a mouse with not one, not two, but three buttons, as well as a four way scroll wheel. They have called their mouse, quite simply, 
It’s farewell to film at Dixons, as the company announced that it would no longer stock 35mm film-based cameras. 
After reaching a peak in the UK of 2.9 million cameras sold in 1989, 35mm camera sales have been steadily falling, with the public being wooed by the convenience, improving quality and falling costs of consumer digital cameras. 
“Time and technology move on … digital cameras are now the rule, rather than the exception. We have decided that the time is now right to take 35mm cameras out of the frame,” Magrath added. 
After a period of speculation, a press release on UK cable company NTL’s Web site makes it official that they intend to move their customers to broadband connection “up to 10Mb as standard.” 
We think it may be some time before this actually gets to the customers, as NTL are also talking of introducing an interim service, ‘The Turbo Button,’ which will burst a connection to higher speeds, when customers are downloading bandwidth heavy content like video. 
O2 is set to introduce the new Windows Xda Exec, touted as the most feature-packed smartphone ever released. 
Powering the smartphone is an Intel PXA270 520MHz processor supported by 128MB ROM and 64MB RAM onboard, with expansion taken care of via a MMC/SD Card slot (supporting SDIO). 
Yahoo is testing a new Audio search facility to let users find audio files on the Web. 
Although the service is still in beta we were impressed with its speedy and simple interface: typing in the name of one of my (sadly) obscure old punk songs immediately brought up the album details, a list of download locations and links to reviews and other released albums. 
Almost a fifth of US consumers have admitted falling victim to identity theft, with younger adults at greatest risk, according to new figures. 
Experian-Gallup found that around two-thirds of consumers who have yet to experience identity theft felt that it was unlikely to happen to them, with only six per cent taking the precaution of purchasing some form of identity theft protection.