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Posts Tagged ‘Prs’

Licensing pact a big step towards fixing EU music stores

Major members of the online music industry, including iTunes and Amazon, have signed an agreement with the European Commission to work towards more even and widespread music distribution across all of Europe. As part of the agreement, the music industry intends to do away with the limitations of the current licensing system so that music fans can have greater choice and clear usage rights, no matter where they are in Europe.

The agreement came after the fourth Roundtable on the Online Distribution of Music held Monday by Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes. Participants included Amazon, BEUC, EMI, iTunes, Nokia, PRS for Music, SACEM, STIM, and Universal. It was the first time the music industry has managed to agree on a common roadmap in Europe, which has been frustratingly segmented for years thanks to outdated licensing and rights practices in the EU.

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Sony brings over a million Google Books to the Reader
Cool move by Sony to bolster the number of titles in its Reader ebook store — it’s linked up with Google to provide over a million free public domain works from Google Books, just like those fun folks at Barnes and Noble. The books are in the EPUB format and will work with the PRS-505 or the PRS-700 in the US only for now — different countries have different copyright terms, so we’d imagine the lawyers are busy sorting it all out. Sure, none of this will do much to shake the Kindle’s market- and mindshare, but at least Sony won’t be deleting this stuff off your device without your permission, right?

[Thanks, Tom]

Filed under: Handhelds

Sony brings over a million Google Books to the Reader originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jul 2009 21:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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