MegaUpload founder Kim ‘Dotcom’ Schmitz has finally been granted bail in New Zealand after a third attempt to get out of jail. As previously reported, Schmitz, one of four men arrested in New Zealand last month at the request of US authorities in relation to their involvement in the Mega empire, had previously been refused bail twice because of concerns he would flee the country for home nation Germany, where it would be much harder for America to extradite him.

But yesterday a New Zealand judge accepted the arguments put forward by Schmitz’s lawyer that, with all his client’s bank accounts frozen, the accused wouldn’t have the means to leave the country. Prosecutors had previously expressed concerns Schmitz still had access to other secret sources of cash, but Judge Nevin Dawson yesterday said there was no evidence that was the case.

He also noted that, while it might hard for the US to extradite Schmitz should he manage to get to Germany, he could still be prosecuted through the German courts, meaning a return to his home country wouldn’t necessarily ensure he was out of the reach of the law.

Dawson ruled: “Since [the original bail hearing], all known assets have been seized and are unavailable for Mr Dotcom’s use or disposal. [Meanwhile] no new assets or accounts of any significance have been revealed since his arrest. Mr Dotcom’s submission that he has not concealed any assets or bank accounts has largely been borne out”.

The terms of Schmitz’s bail have not been revealed, though other bailed former Mega execs have been banned from using the internet. Speaking outside the court, the Mega chief told reporters: “I am relieved to go home to see my family, my three little kids and my pregnant wife. And I hope you understand that that is all I want to say right now”.

As previously reported, the three other Mega executives arrested at the same time as Schmitz have already been bailed. All four, and three other men, one arrested in Europe and two still at large, are accused of copyright infringement, racketeering and money laundering in relation to the now defunct MegaUpload service, and other related websites.

Danish anti-piracy group RettighedsAlliancen has seemingly secured an injunction through the country’s courts ordering local internet service provider Three to block access to its customers to Grooveshark, the often controversial streaming music service which claims its legit, but which is currently facing legal action from all four majors.

As previously reported, the Danish rights body accused Grooveshark, which lets users upload music to its catalogue, of infringing copyright last November, and this week a court seems to have agreed with those claims. Three could as yet appeal, but if it doesn’t successfully other Danish ISPs are likely to be served with a similar injunction.

While web blocking injunctions against unlicensed content services are becoming common in some jurisdictions, and are in theory possible in the UK since last year’s Newzbin ruling, injunctions against a service like Grooveshark are possibly even more controversial in that some rights owners have licensed the platform, and its operators claim to be on the right side of copyright law because they operate a takedown system to remove unlicensed tracks if and when made aware of them.

That said, such a takedown system only really assures protection from infringement liability under US copyright law, and even there rights owners – who feel Grooveshark only pays lip service to its takedown obligations – are trying to show that a lot of the unlicensed content available on the streaming service is uploaded by staff not users, so the takedown system does not protect them from infringement claims.

Grooveshark is yet to respond to the reports of a web block being ordered against it in Denmark.

OK Go might be YouTube poster boys with their hugely popular videos, but millions of views on the video platform does not a business make, or so says their manager Jamie Kitman, who was speaking at the recent SF MusicTech conference, according to Digital Music News.

The royalties received from YouTube are nominal, despite the popularity of the videos, Kitman said, and all that video viewing does not result in mega record sales either (which is partly because the songs aren’t all that great, but there you go). OK Go!’s main income stream is sponsorship, Kitman confirmed, with big brands keen to work with a band whose pop promos generate such large traffic and media chatter. But that option, the manager conceded, is only open to artists with an existing fanbase and reputation.

DMN quotes Kitman thus: “I can speak for an artist who gets a lot of traffic, which is OK Go. And I would say that ‘trickle’ is the operative word, in terms of the revenue we receive from places like YouTube and VEVO. The YouTube revenue is so small based on how many streams we’ve done that I would say that it’s not a business model, it’s like finding change on the street”.

As the British record industry prepares for its big party at The O2 tonight, label chiefs were already celebrating yesterday after scoring a win in the first stage of their legal efforts to force ISPs in the UK to block access to The Pirate Bay.

As previously reported, record label trade body the BPI took aim at The Pirate Bay last year after the landmark ruling in the Newzbin case, in which a British judge, for the first time, ordered an internet service provider to block access to its customers to a file-sharing website, after the operators of that site tried to circumvent an earlier court ruling against them by moving their service outside the jurisdiction of the UK courts.

Following the precedent set in the Newzbin case, the BPI asked various British ISPs to voluntarily block access to The Pirate Bay. When the net firms refused the trade body went legal, and stage one of that litigation asked the question “is The Pirate Bay liable for the infringement it enables, even if the Pirate Bay servers themselves do not host any unlicensed music files?”

And the answer, in the words of High Court judge Ricky Arnold, is: “Yes, it fucking is, man, it fucking is”. Well, I am paraphrasing ever so slightly, but that’s basically what he meant.

If you’d prefer Arnold’s exact words, they went something like this: “In my judgment, the operators of [The Pirate Bay] do authorise its users’ infringing acts of copying and communication to the public. They go far beyond merely enabling or assisting. Despite their ability to do so, and despite the judicial findings that have been made against them, the operators of [The Pirate Bay] take no steps to prevent infringement. On the contrary … they actively encourage it and treat any attempts to prevent it (judicial or otherwise) with contempt. I [therefore] conclude that both users and the operators of [The Pirate Bay] infringe the copyrights of the claimants (and those they represent) in the UK”.

Welcoming that ruling, BPI boss Geoff Taylor told reporters: “The High Court today ruled that The Pirate Bay is illegal. The site defrauds musicians and causes huge damage to the music industry and wider creative industries. We will now proceed with our application to have the site blocked to protect the UK’s creative industries from further harm”.

Of course it’s no real surprise that The Pirate Bay has been labelled a copyright infringer by the UK courts, it having lost similar legal cases all across Europe (though it’s true the English law concept of ‘authorising infringement’ is less well tested when it comes to certain file-sharing services), and therefore phase two of this litigation will be more interesting, ie whether the Newzbin principle will be extended forcing ISPs to finally block access to the rogue file-sharing site. A ruling on that matter is now expected in June.

The Pirate Bay, of course, carries on regardless. More committed users of the file-sharing site will almost certainly be able to circumvent any blockades put in place by the ISPs, while the Bay’s previously reported move to listing magnet rather than BitTorrent files reduces the size of the site’s database significantly, enabling users to download and host their own copies of The Pirate Bay website.

And if all those alternatives fail, the filesharing community is already talking up ‘Tribler’, an alternative BitTorrent client that circumvents existing blocks and takedowns by bypassing the need to use a website entirely. So, file-sharing can continue – though, the big rights owners might argue, the pursuit of accessing and sharing illegal free content gets ever more geeky, and that should achieve their objectives of reducing piracy amongst mainstream consumers.

France’s Hadopi department, the body overseeing the three-strikes system for combating piracy in the country, has reportedly sent its first set of strike-three notices to court, meaning 100 French file-sharers could soon suffer the penalties set out in the controversial anti-piracy laws.

Those penalties aren’t likely to be as severe as originally thought -  ie a 1500 euro fine and a one month net connection suspension – though the third strikes could occur at a politically sensitive time, with those still calling for France’s arguably draconian anti-file-sharing laws to be reformed or revoked likely to step up their campaigning during the upcoming French Presidential elections, while also capitalising on rising opposition to other copyright measures in Europe, mainly the ACTA agreement.

Team Hadopi, though, will presumably try to fight back by citing various stats that suggest file-sharing has slumped in France since the introduction of the three-strikes system and the sending out of warning letters to over 800,000 suspected file-sharers. Which may or may not ensure Hadopi can survive any upcoming shifts in France’s political community.

Back in the UK, of course, the three-strikes system in theory set up by the 2010 Digital Economy Act is yet to get off the ground. And that was something Labour’s culture lady Harriet Harman was keen to talk about yesterday when she gave a speech about all things music at the University Of Hertfordshire.

Her rather long and somewhat predictable ramble called on both the music and tech industries to collaborate to capitalise on the potential of digital music and to overcome the challenges of online piracy, while she called on government to get its arse into gear and implement the copyright provisions of the DEA her government made law shortly before losing power in the 2010 General Election.

The three-strikes element of the DEA needed a clear timetable, she said, while the government should also be giving consideration to the issue of web-blocking, which was fudged somewhat in the Digital Economy Act in order to ensure its speedy passage through parliament. Basically, while she welcomed some of the findings in the government’s Hargreaves Review of copyright law which potentially expands user rights, she concluded that the government wasn’t doing enough to likewise help the traditional rights owners.

Harman: “The government should recognise – like they do in the US – that there is a public policy imperative to protect rights owners. Currently rights holders feel that they are on their own, that the law is not enforced and the Intellectual Property Office is not on their side. So government must act – gear up enforcement and tackle the fragmentation of the enforcement agencies”.

Microsoft is back in talks with the record companies about yet another music venture, according to C-Net, this one built around the Xbox but also serving Windows-based phones. This service would seemingly be different to Microsoft’s Zune platform, which initially supported the IT firm’s now discontinued Zune players, but which is now also available to Xbox users. The Zune platform itself replaced an earlier digital music play by Microsoft. Negotiations are seemingly at an early stage though, C-Net says, there are plans to launch something this year.

Prosecutors in the US filed new papers with the courts on Friday in the ongoing MegaUpload case, adding some extra charges against the rogue file-transfer and video site’s founder Kim Schmitz, three new copyright and five new wire fraud charges to be precise. Assuming American authorities are able to extradite the Mega man from New Zealand, they are hoping to get him for every crime possible in relation to the Mega empire he ran for five years.

According to Digital Music News, the latest court filings also make a number of claims about the Mega operations. First that the Mega service had 66.6 million registered users rather than the 180 million Team Mega claimed, and that 90% of those with accounts only used them to download content, not upload, suggesting that the vast majority of Mega users were using the service to access unlicensed music and movie files, and not to store, distribute or share their own content.

Some of the remaining 10%, meanwhile, only uploaded, suggesting they might have been part of the network of users rumoured to be incentivised by the Mega company to upload unlicensed files up to both the Mega video and file-transfer platforms, ensuring a steady supply of content for the 90% who only used the service to access free entertainment. Prosecutors also claim that not only were Team Mega downloading official music videos and TV shows from YouTube and uploading them to MegaVideo to bolster their content catalogues, they also nabbed user generated content from the Google-owned video service, so to give the impression Mega users were using the site to post their own UGC too.

Mega’s lawyers are yet to respond to the latest allegations against the company’s management. Four key execs, of course, are awaiting an extradition hearing in New Zealand. One more Mega operative has been arrested in Europe, while two other wanted former execs are still evading the authorities.

Domino Records has entered into a new partnership with eMusic in the US, Billboard reports, the London-based indie having been one of a number of independent labels to exit the subscription-based download set up in 2010, claiming that the digital firm had unfairly restructured the service and payment terms in order to woo the major labels.

Confirming Domino was now back on board, eMusic chief Adam Klein told Billboard: “We’re excited to have Domino as a US label partner. Domino has performed consistently well on eMusic over the past few weeks. Their artists, like Real Estate, The Kills, and Laura Marling, are all artists that our members love”.

Meanwhile Music Week reports that Klein now hopes to strike up new deals with Beggars and Merge, the other indies which left eMusic in 2010.

It’s no secret that the record industry isn’t that impressed with Google’s progress in removing links to unlicensed content sources from the lists of websites that come up when you search for an artist’s name on the market leader search engine, despite the web giant having pledged to act on such things in 2010. The International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry issued a report expressing its disappointment with Google’s anti-piracy efforts late last year, and U2 manager Paul McGuinness told MIDEM last month “it amazes me that Google has not done the right thing”.

Now it looks like those continuing frustrations could lead to litigation, despite record label trade bodies continuing to negotiate with the web giant on piracy issues, and despite more significant efforts elsewhere in the Google empire to stop copyright infringers from using the firm’s publishing platforms and ad sale services.

But it’s the fact that the Google search engine still links to websites and file-sharing networks that deal primarily in illegal content that is angering the big rights owners the most, and legal experts have now been consulted regarding the possibility of forcing the web firm’s hand through the US courts on this issue, possibly via a copyright claim, or maybe an anti-trust action, Google execs being increasingly sensitive of allegations of anti-competitive behaviour of late.

While we don’t know how serious suggestions of going legal on this issue really are, we know it’s been considered because of a document circulated to a small group of record label chiefs by the IFPI which has been published by German newspaper Handelszeitung. According to Torrentfreak, the document says: “IFPI’s litigation team, in coordination with the [Recording Industry Association Of America], is continuing to negotiate with Google to obtain better anti-piracy cooperation in various areas. [But] Google continues to fail to prioritise legal music sites over illegal sites in search results, claiming that its algorithm for search results is based on the relevance of sites to consumers”.

On going the legal route on this issue, the document continues: “With a view to addressing this failure, IFPI obtained a highly confidential and preliminary legal opinion in July 2011 on the possibility of bringing a competition law complaint against Google for abuse of its dominant position, given the distortion of the market for legitimate online music that is likely to result from Google’s prioritising of illegal sites”.

It remains to be seen if the record industry’s ongoing grievances with Google really do go legal. It’s possible some label execs hope that the mere threat of messy litigation might persuade the web firm – which has its own ambitions to be a big time music provider of course, so needs to play ball to an extent despite its own market dominance – to step up its anti-piracy efforts in the one part of its operations where it seems least willing to comply with the rights owners’ demands, ie web search.

MP3 resale website ReDigi – which is caught up in a legal battle with EMI, of course – is reportedly pissed off that the major has stepped in to cut off its supply of artwork and music previews.

As previously reported, EMI, and the wider US record industry, reckons ReDigi, which lets people resell MP3s, and supposedly forces the seller to delete their copy of the digital file after sale, is actually a platform that simply enables individuals to profit from copyright infringement. EMI’s Capitol division is suing the digital start-up, though failed to get a summary injunction against the resale site earlier this month. It was confirmed this week that that case will now go properly to court in August.

Meanwhile, according to Wired, ReDigi has had to stop including artwork next to MP3s being sold on its platform, and is now relying on YouTube for preview clips of tracks, after US-based streaming service Rdio pulled out of a partnership with the resale site, allegedly at EMI’s insistence. Obviously Rdio needs to stay on the right side of the major labels to ensure it still has access to their music for its core subscription-based streaming music service.

Wired quote from a letter written by ReDigi’s lawyer Ray Beckerman seemingly filed with the courts, in which he confirmed Rdio had suddenly stopped providing artwork and previews to his clients. He also claims that was as a result of action by EMI, after ReDigi confirmed where it sourced said content from in a previous court submission. Beckerman: “Apparently, having been denied an injunction, they [EMI] have sought to use extrajudicial tactics to accomplish what they were unable to obtain in a court of law”.

Of course, depriving ReDigi of its album cover jpegs and in-platform previews doesn’t actually stop it reselling MP3s, even if its service will replicate iTunes less as a result of the move. EMI, of course, hopes to put the MP3 resale site totally out of business once this case goes to court this summer.

As expected, there was much criticism in the file-sharing community and beyond yesterday about the wording of an official notice posted by the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency at the former domain of music blog RnBXclusive.com, which had been closed down by the authorities amid allegations of copyright infringement and conspiracy to defraud the music industry.

As previously reported, not only did the message tell former RnBXclusive.com readers that the site had been shut down as part of a criminal investigation, it offered the stern warning that “if you have downloaded music using this website you may have committed a criminal offence which carries a maximum penalty of up to ten years imprisonment and an unlimited fine under UK law”. The warning was accompanied by a widget that showed the user’s IP address, and an additional message that amounted to saying “we know where you live”.

As noted yesterday, that warning is not really backed up by UK law, because while you could be sued by rights owners for downloading unlicensed content, a criminal prosecution is only likely if you operate a file-sharing service, or upload a significant amount of content to a file-sharing network, and even then a lengthy prison sentence would only be possible if it could be shown you were profiting from your infringement, ie you were running a commercial piracy operation.

In fact, so disconnected from the real law was SOCA’s statement, that some online commentators started to wonder if the message was a hoax, perhaps a joker had somehow managed to take over RnBXclusive.com’s domain after the UK police moved to shut the site down, and had posted an over the top warning to embarrass the authorities. (The slightly amateurish look of the police notice was also noted, though SOCA’s official website does look a bit like it was designed on a night school course, so that probably wasn’t relevant.)

Anyway, it turned out the statement was, indeed, the real deal. As criticism of the way the warning was worded started to spread yesterday, the crime agency took the message down and replaced it with a more simple “SOCA has taken control of this domain name”, though the government body insists that the more controversial statement was always intended to be temporary, presumably to shock and scare the 70,000 users apparently visiting the RnB downloads blog each day.

Commenting on the wider impact of its sudden swoop on RnBXclusive.com and the stern if misleading warning it posted on that domain for 36 hours, SOCA said in a statement yesterday: “Responses to the takedown have included action by three more [unlicensed] music sites. One has taken itself offline voluntarily, one claims to be considering taking itself offline, and another has posted a claim on its home page to now only be dealing in legal music files following the activity”.

The man arrested in relation to RnBXclusive.com has been bailed, and faces charges of conspiracy to defraud. It’s thought the site made money through ad sales, and the profits made on the back of the posting of unlicensed music files will be key to securing a conviction for fraud. It remains to be seen how the criminal prosecution spans out, though in the meantime SOCA hasn’t really aided the anti-piracy cause by opening itself – and the record industry, which many believe (rightly or wrongly) was involved in the SOCA investigation and warning notice – to accusations of deliberately misrepresenting to law to scare web users into submission.

Is mobile maker HTC planning its own streaming music service? Well, any mobile company that doesn’t currently offer a bespoke or badged white label music service is regularly rumoured to have such a thing in development, though Gizmodo says that HTC really is working on its own music offer, seemingly in partnership with Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine’s Beats Audio company, in which the Taiwanese technology firm took a stake last year.

Presumably Interscope boss Iovine could smooth over at least one major label licence for any HTC music service, should the company choose to licence direct rather than piggy backing on someone else’s digital catalogue.

More from the world of mobile, and Sony Corp has completed its acquisition of the mobile maker in which it has long been a partner, Sony Ericsson. The entertainment and consumer electronics giant announced it was buying Swedish mobile firm Ericsson out of the handset business last October, and the deal was finalised yesterday.

Confirming that fact, Ericsson said in a statement: “Ericsson has today completed the divestment of its 50% stake in Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, including the broad IP cross-licensing agreement, jointly announced by Sony Corporation and Ericsson on October 27, 2011. This makes Sony Ericsson a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony. The agreed cash consideration for the transaction is 1.05 billion euros”.

The completion of Sony’s buy out of the mobile maker follows last week’s news that Google’s acquisition of the Motorola handset manufacturing business had now been approved by competition regulators in both the US and Europe, though both indicated they would be watching carefully to see that the web giant did not abuse the patents it had acquired as part of the deal.

That purchase is still to be approved in China, where Google still has a base despite moving a big chunk of its Chinese operations to separately regulated Hong Kong in 2010. If the Chinese government objected to the Google Motorola acquisition it could throw a serious spanner into the works, though few expect them to do so, despite past tensions between the web firm and the authorities in China.

A British music blog that posted, amongst other things, links to music files, many of them unlicensed, has been shut down by the Serious Organised Crime Agency. People visiting RnBXclusive.com today will see a SOCA statement that says the UK government agency has taken control of the domain, and that the individuals who ran the blog have been “arrested for fraud”.

In a warning to RnBXclusive’s former users, the SOCA statement also notes: “The majority of music files that were available via this site were stolen from the artists. If you have downloaded music using this website you may have committed a criminal offence which carries a maximum penalty of up to ten years imprisonment and an unlimited fine under UK law”. It also displays the user’s IP address, along with other details, and informs that this can be used to identify them.

It’s not the first time the UK authorities have taken action against the providers of unlicensed music content of course, though the most high profile action to date – against the operators of the Oink BitTorrent community – wasn’t exactly successful.

While some of those who used the service were successfully prosecuted for copyright infringement, the more important case – against the man who operated the site – failed. Rather than charging Alan Ellis with authorising infringement, the English law equivalent of contributory infringement, the copyright concept used to convict the founders of The Pirate Bay in Sweden, the authorities went with ‘conspiracy to defraud’.

That’s possibly because the ability of the ‘authorising’ principle under English law to make the providers of link services or file-sharing software liable for the infringement of their users is untested in court. It might also be because the penalties for conspiracy to defraud are much higher.

But the problem with the Oink case was that, in order to prove conspiracy to defraud, there needs to be evidence of a deliberate intent to profit at the detriment of another, ie the record companies, which simply couldn’t be proven, given Oink was an organic online community not run for profit. Whether the case for fraud will be stronger against the operators of RnBXclusive remains to be seen.

Meanwhile the file-sharing community is certain to object to the language used by SOCA in its warning statement – especially the threat of ten years in jail for simply downloading unlicensed content. Under the Copyright, Designs And Patent Act 1988 only distributors of unlicensed content themselves are liable for such a long sentence, so it’s not clear what SOCA is basing its claim on here.

And a prison sentence for simply accessing unlicensed content online would be unprecedented, so much so that it’s hard to imagine a court passing such a sentence, or indeed the Crown Prosecution Service ever even pursuing such a case. Perhaps SOCA knows something we don’t, though such bold statements only really help those who argue that current and/or new copyright laws carry penalties disproportionate to the offence.

As Spain gets ready to put its new Sinde Law into action, which will make it easier for rights owners in the country to get injunctions to block access to copyright infringing websites, another civil case on file-sharing has found in favour of the file-sharing service provider, as has been the norm in the Spanish courts.

Cinetube helps web-users navigate film files online and the majority of the movie files it links to are unlicensed. In some jurisdictions just linking to infringing content – if that forms the core of a site’s operations and no efforts are made to filter out or warn against unlicensed music or movies – constitutes pretty straightforward copyright infringement in itself, though in Spain generally the courts have been unwilling to hold such websites liable, especially if they are not run for profit.

The landmark ruling in Spanish law is that involving links service Sharemula which – although distinguished in another more recent Spanish case last April where the operator of a file-sharing links service profited from ad sales and SMS services – was deemed to set the precedent in the latest Cinetube case. So much so, the file-sharing service was able to successfully fight off copyright infringement litigation from the movie industry.

However, that might change if and when the new Sinde Law goes live in March, as Cinetube is known to be high up on the target list of the content industries, who hope the new web-blocking law will circumvent past precedents and enable them to force ISPs to block access to such websites. Though, as previously reported, the new web-blocking system may be delayed somewhat as Spain’s Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments from the Association Of Web Users which claims the Sinde Law is unconstitutional.

All three of Kim Schmitz’s MegaUpload colleagues who were arrested with him last month for their involvement in the file-transfer and video sharing service have now been let out of jail on bail, though Schmitz himself remains incarcerated.

As previously reported, the New Zealand authorities arrested four men last month at the request of the US, who accuse seven men in total of copyright infringement, racketeering and money laundering in relation to their involvement with the Mega empire.

Two of the four execs arrested in New Zealand, Bram van der Kolk and Finn Batato, were officially granted bail more or less immediately after their arrests, though technicalities about where they would stay while on bail meant they were only actually let out of jail in the last week.

The fourth man, Mathias Ortmann, was bailed yesterday. Despite the prosecution expressing concerns about the four men being in close contact while on bail, Ortmann will stay with van der Kolk while awaiting an extradition hearing, while Batato will stay with Schmitz’s wife. All have been banned from accessing the internet while on bail.

As also previously reported, Mega founder Schmitz has been denied bail amid fears he would flee New Zealand to his home country of Germany, where it would be much harder for America to extradite him.

MySpace has added a million new users to its service since relaunching its music player in December, so take that all you cynical doom mongerers you. Oh hang on, we were the cynical doom mongerers, weren’t we? I suppose we should never forget the ancient maxim – just because your service is shit, doesn’t mean it can’t be successful. I mean, look at BT Broadband.

Anyway, it’s MySpace itself which is hailing this recent success, though its bold claims are seemingly based on independently verified comScore figures. Tim Vanderhook, one of the bosses of Specific Media, who bought the flagging social network from News Corp last year, told reporters: “The numbers tell an amazing story of strong momentum and dramatic change for MySpace. And the one million-plus new user accounts we’ve seen in the last 30 days validates our approach”.

Vanderhook added that the turnaround in user figures – which had previously been declining for years – is a direct result of the service’s new music player launching, coupled with Facebook and Twitter integration. He also stressed once again that the company has a bigger catalogue of digital music than any of its competitors in the streaming music space. Vanderhook: “MySpace is building a meaningful social entertainment experience around content, where consumers can share and discover the music they love. Consumers are getting excited about MySpace again – a testament to a great music product”.

While Specific Media’s complete plan for turning around MySpace’s fortunes, both commercially as well as in terms of users, are not yet known, music and the new music player are known to be key. And, as previously reported, at CES last month Specific chiefs and their MySpace creative advisor Justin Timberblake also revealed ambitions in the second screening space, providing a platform through which net-connected users can watch and comment on content – most likely music – in real time.

Protests took place across Europe this weekend against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, the previously reported global treaty that aims to harmonise some key elements of intellectual property law around the world.

As also previously reported, while ACTA has been controversial in some quarters since it was first conceived a few years back, in part because of the secrecy that shrouded some of the negotiations, opposition has become more vocal in recent weeks following the anti-SOPA/PIPA protests in the US, despite many countries having already signed up to agreement.

Those who oppose ACTA cite the main argument that appeared during the anti-SOPA protests, that the agreement will introduce draconian new copyright-enforcing laws that will hinder freedom of expression on the net. Though supporters of the Agreement in Europe argue that, unlike SOPA, which would have introduced new web-blocking measures in the US to combat piracy, ACTA won’t have any noticeable impact on copyright law in Europe, because European copyright systems already adhere to all the requirements set out in the treaty.

Although in theory a day of global protests, most of the anti-ACTA events took place in Europe, with marches in Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Estonia and Bulgaria perhaps most high profile. In the UK there was a smaller protest of about 200 people, according to the BBC, in London, though other protests did also take place in Glasgow and Nottingham.

The US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea all signed the Agreement last year, while the EU and most EU member states added their signatures last month. Though not all EU countries have signed up and some, in particular Slovakia and Germany, have now expressed reservations about signing the agreement without further consideration, while the Czech Republic, who did sign last month, are also said to be reconsidering their involvement in the treaty.

Among those protesting against ACTA in the UK this weekend were the Open Rights Group and The Pirate Party. Jim Killock from the former told the BBC: “Three member states in Europe are now looking like they don’t want to sign. That shows that politicians are only really starting to look at this now. All of a sudden, the whole thing is breaking down”.

However, the British government remained committed to the Agreement this weekend, with IP Minister Judith Wilcox telling reporters: “It was important for the UK to be a signatory of ACTA as it will set an international standard for tackling large-scale infringements of [intellectual property rights], through the creation of common enforcement standards and more effective international cooperation. During the negotiations, we continually pushed for greater transparency as we believed that this would have led to a better understanding of the agreement by the public”.

Although the EU has signed ACTA, the Agreement is still to be approved by the European Parliament, providing those who oppose the treaty with a target date for their protests. The European Parliament is to discuss the IP agreement in June.

New anti-piracy laws in Spain have hit a setback after the country’s Supreme Court last week agreed to hear an appeal by the Association Of Web Users who claim the so called Sinde Law is unconstitutional.

Spanish copyright laws have been criticised for over a decade after various courts there ruled that the file-sharing of unlicensed content was not illegal, hindering civil legal action even against those who provide software or web services that enable copyright infringement. Under pressure from other countries, and especially the US, Spanish politicians passed the Sinde Law, to crack down on online piracy.

Unlike in the UK and France, where new anti-piracy laws target those who actually access illegal content sources via three-strikes style systems, in Spain web-blocking was prioritised, making it easier for rights owners to force copyright infringing websites offline. Somewhat ironically, the measures in the Sinde Law, which was lobbied for by the US government, have parallels with the SOPA and PIPA proposals in America itself, which politicians there have now rejected (albeit probably only for the time being).

The Association Of Web Users says that the Sinde Law, which allows a government body to issue orders to internet service providers to block access to copyright infringing websites, is unconstitutional because only a court should be able to force a website offline.

Similar claims were successfully made against the Hadopi laws in France (in that case that only a court should be able to suspend an individual file-sharer’s internet connection), though the government there got around that constitutional challenge by adding a judicial stage to their new anti-piracy system, whereby a judge considers and approves any action orders. Presumably Spanish officials could add a similar extra stage to their web-blocking system if the country’s Supreme Court sides with the AOWU.

The Spanish Supreme Court last week confirmed it will consider the AOWU’s claim, while also issuing an injunction that basically stops the Spanish government from putting the anti-piracy system set out in the Sinde Law live pending their hearing, though ministers can appeal that element at any point before the end of the month.

Google is planning to enter the digital content device market, according to reports. It is thought that Google’s wi-fi enabled home entertainment hub unit thing would initially have music at its heart, presumably hooked into the web firm’s newish download and digital locker platforms.

It would put the web giant more directly in competition with Apple, a once friendly rival of Google which has become a head-on competitor as both firms place more importance on their respective smartphone operating systems.

Amazon too, of course, is stepping up its efforts in the entertainment hardware space, so the launch of a Google device would escalate the battle between the three big players in online content, as well as pitching the web firm against more traditional entertainment device makers, many of which are now using Google’s Android operating system.

It’s thought a prototype of the device is already in production, and assumed that if and when it goes to market Google would hand the job over to Motorola, which it acquired last year but which has so far operated autonomously from its new owners.

Elsewhere in Google news, Broadcast reports that YouTube, which has been pumping its own money into original content for the first time in the last year via content partnership deals with media, brands and celebrities, is looking to launch 20 UK-specific channels, with £10 million set aside to make that happen.