ASCAP wants websites that embed videos featuring ASCAP members songs to begin paying royalties. The organization has already begun sending letters to bloggers, including Jason Calcanis, CEO of content generator Mahalo.com. While the organization is targeting specific commercial sites, YouTube, through which most embedded videos are served, has told targeted sites to contact them directly in order to settle the matter.

The New York Times first experiment with charging for online content may come in a $5 a month access fee. In a recent survey with the newspapers print subscribers, the Grey Lady also accessed if readers would pay “$2.50 a month for web access.” While the company desperately needs the increase in revenue, analysts are unsure of whether or not the shift will be able to save the Times.

Sprint reached an agreement with Ericsson and will turn its wireless network over to the Swedish company. The $5 billion deal, which greatly expands Ericsson’s reach, comes as Sprint tries to right its business by concentrating on “new products and customer retention.” Technically, Spring is not selling the network, rather handing Ericsson the job of managing it on a daily basis.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is sueing Tagged.com over faulty membership issues. Cuomo is charging Tagged.com, a spam fueled social network, with running “deceptive e-mail marketing practice,” as well as “invasion of privacy.” The Attorney General claims that Tagged.com tried to trick users into giving the social network access to their digital address books, from which they would send more invitations.

Project Canoe will fail. So says Phil Leigh, Senior Analyst at Inside Digital Media in his new 71-page report entitled Future Developments in Video Advertising. I’m sure this news will be viewed as disappointing for David Verklin and his team.

Nielsen is reporting that over 31 million people viewed Michael Jackson’s funeral on television. While the number is very high, it does not take into account the millions of viewers who streamed the coverage through a variety of streaming sites, nor the thousands who watched in movie theaters nationwide. Analysts know that over ten million live streams were served online, however, it is not clear exactly how many people viewed.

The US Olympic Committee is set to launch its own cable network. The US Olympic Network will cover the Olympics and Paraolympics and will only be available on Comcast’s digital classic tier. The goal is to generate revenue through devoting itself to Olympic coverage, while competing against NBC, who has broadcast rights to the next Olympics.

The SEC will continue to investigate Apple’s lack of disclosure about CEO Steve Jobs health. While the company noted that Jobs was healthy, despite increasing weight loss and rampant rumors that Jobs was seriously ill, it is unclear whether or not the company made misleading remarks about Jobs health, in order to financially protect its assets. In the span of nine days in January, Apple went from saying that Jobs was healthy to noting that he had a hormone imbalance, to eventually announcing that was taking a medical leave of absence, during which he had a liver transplant.

Verizon filed a complaint against Cablevision with the FCC over Cablevision’s refusal to make HD sports channels available on FiOS. Verizon claims that Cablevision is “intentionally and unlawfully” withholding programming rights for the NY Knicks, NY Ranger, NY Islanders, NJ Devils and Buffalo Sabres. While Cablevision, which owns the programming rights to each teams home games, sells Verizon access to its standard definition channels, Verizon claims that by refusing to sell HD channels as well Cablevision has an unfair advantage.

Google unveiled its new PC-based operating system yesterday. The Chrome OS is similar to its Chrome web browser in that it was built for people “who live on the web.” The open source OS will initially be available for netbooks in the second half of 2010.

Web sites are rapidly preparing for a big day today, as coverage of Michael Jackson’s funeral is expected to strain servers. The ceremony is expected to start at 9:30 am PST at the Staples Center in Los Angeles and will be streamed live online via Hulu. The memorial service will also be broadcast on network and cable television, including CNN, E! Entertainment, MSNBC and ABC.

ABC has finally begun streaming content on Hulu months after it’s parent company, Disney, became part of the News Corp, NBCU joint venture. ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, one of its most popular programs, was the first to stream on the popular online video site. ABC is set to begin streaming shows like Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty in the near future.

The Department of Justice is reviewing the Apple, AT&T exclusivity deal for the iPhone. While it has yet to become a full fledge investigation, the DoJ is putting increased pressure on similar deals, claiming that exclusivity with larger carriers hurts competition. Under their current deal, the AT&T-Apple iPhone exclusivity agreement ends in 2010.

Netscape Founder Marc Andreesen and business partner Ben Horowitz have started a new VC firm dubbed Andreesen Horowitz. The new firm, which has already raised $300 million in seed capital, will invest in cloud computing, virtualization and consumer electronics, amongst other new tech businesses. The firm plans on investing in roughly 70-80 new software companies, before making larger investments in the future.

NBC’s coverage of the Wimbledon finale on Sunday was the fifth highest in Wimbledon men’s championship history. The epic battle between Roger Federer and Andy Roddick drew a 4.2/12 overnight rating, which despite, being high, was not able to eclipse last year’s Federer/Nadal final in ratings. Wimbledon’s highest ratings occurred in 2000, when Pete Sampras won his final championship. Sampras was the last American to win the men’s championship.

George Hotz is the first hacker to unlock the Apple iPhone 3GS. Hotz, who was the first to jailbreak the first iPhone, released the application Purplera1n this past weekend, the first piece of software that will allow the iPhone 3GS to run on a different network. Despite reports that Purplera1n makes it incredibly easy to jailbreak the iPhone, analysts believe only a small portion of users will attempt to modify the smartphone.

The Department of Justice is officially investigating Google’s book service. The DOJ will probe Google’s settlement with publishers and authors with acute insight into antitrust issues involved. The suit will not come to court until sessions continue in September.

Warner Bros. acquired the movie rights to Midway Games properties through a bankruptcy court sale. The Hollywood studio purchased the rights to the Mortal Kombat, Spy Hunter and Joust franchises and more for approximately $33 million. The struggling Midway was unleashed by parent company Viacom last year after CEO Sumner Redstone sold his controlling share of 87%.

Many networks are planning broadcast coverage of Michael Jackson’s funeral on Tuesday. ABC, CNN and MSNBC, as well as E! Entertainment, will cover the funeral live from the Staples Center beginning 10 am Pacific time. While NBC, Fox and CBS do not have planned coverage, CNN, whose Jackson coverage has spurned a ratings burst, will show the funeral on HLN (aka Headline News) and CNN International, in addition to its main channel.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs tied Transformers: Revenge of the Fall tied for the top spot at the box office this weekend. The 3-D animated Fox Film and Paramount’s summer blockbuster each took in $42.5 million domestically, while Ice Age grossed $148 million internationally to take the worldwide box office with a total of $215.5 million. Meanwhile, the Transformers sequel has grossed a total of $591.4 million worldwide.

In less than a week since he passed away, Michael Jackson has sold over 2.6 million digital songs. Digital sale of Jackson’s song in the past week shattered the old record, making Jackson the first artist to sell more than a million downloads in a week. Jackson also currently holds twenty-five spots on Billboard’s Hot Digital Songs chart of 74.

Yesterday afternoon the Obama administration unveiled its financial plan for broadband expansion. Companies interested in investing in America’s broadband grid will have until July 14th to apply, however, Verizon, AT&T and Comcast, the nation’s largest telecommunications company’s, have yet to express interest in investing in the venture. While VP Joe Biden noted that “nation can’t compete in the 21st century — without an immediate, high-quality access for everything from streaming video to information overline”, the current plan is expected to roll out low quality DSL speed.

Facebook is set to launch new privacy controls that will let users select “friends” who can and can’t see specific information. For instance, if a user wanted friends to know that he/she is having a party on Friday, but not his/her boss, the new privacy controls would allow for that. Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly noted that Facebook wants “people to be able to share with as narrow or as broad of an audience as they choose.”

In the latest turn in the Pirate Bay saga, Global Gaming Factory X announced that it plans to increase earnings by selling users spare bandwidth back to ISPs. Business Week noted that the company will resell “broadband capacity on an ad hoc basis to Internet service providers—companies like Comcast (CMCSA) or AT&T (T)—that are in need of a quick injection of cheap bandwidth.” Is this a 21st century solution or merely just another problem for the Pirate Bay? Most likely, another problem.

Apple has run into a major obstacle in trying to sell the iPhone in China. While Apple registered the iPhone in China under the hardware and software categories, it did not register the smartphone in the phone category. Unfortunately for Apple. Hanwang Technology Co. trademarked the iPhone in the phone category and Chinese law will not allow the trademark to be immediately purchased by Apple.

AEG will offer ticket holders for Michael Jackson’s sold-out This Is It tour a full refund. The concert promoter was responsible for the 50 sold out shows Jackson was to perform at London’s O2 Arena. While AEG sold approximately one million tickets, valued at a total of $85, it is giving ticketholders the option of receiving the physical tickets, designed by Jackson, rather than the refund.

The Pirate Bay torrent-sharing network has been acquired by Global Gaming Factory X for $7.8 million. The acquisition comes after the Pirate Bay’s chief officers were ordered to pay a $3.6 million copyright violation. While Global Gaming Factory X noted that it will re-structure the file-sharing sites business plan, the Pirate Bay founders will probably use the buyout money to pay legal fee’s and the RIAA.

The Sony Walkman turns 30 this year. Sony has sold over 385 million Walkman units since its introduction in 1979. It is responsible for introducing and defining the personal music space. However, in the last 8 years, Apple has sold over 210 million iPods, which pretty much tells the story. Sony has some serious reinventing to do.

The Chinese Government have pushed back the starting date of its new web filtering law. Many Chinese tech advocates gathered in Beijing to for what was supposed to be the beginning of a 24-hour Internet boycott, but it turned into a day-long, anti-censorship party. It is unclear when China will adopt the new censorship laws.

Joost, a streaming video service whose name you have probably forgotten, is cutting jobs, killing its consumer products and losing its chief executive. The company will now concentrate on white-label, business-to-business video distribution. The main reason for Joost’s rapid decline has been Hulu, which has all but dominated the full-length, long form streaming content business.

Comcast has teamed up with Clearwire to offer one of the first 4G wireless data networks. Comcast High-Speed 2go will go live today in Portland and with offerings in Atlanta, Chicago and Philadelphia planned by the end of the year. This system is WiMax-based and features download speeds approaching 4 Mbps, that’s about four times faster than current 3G data networks. When Verizon and AT&T get in the game with their LTE-based 4G networks, this is really going to get interesting.

Amazon is pulling the plug on their associates program in Rhode Island just a week after killing the program in North Carolina. The reason being that Amazon is unhappy about pending sales tax legislation in states. Sources say California may be next.

Julius Genachowski, was sworn in as the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission on Monday. The new FCC will be dominated by Democrats who will focus on empowering consumers and deploying nationwide high-speed Internet access. The FCC regulates telephone and cable companies, oversees radio and television and manages the public airwaves, including wireless data networks.

The Supreme Court has decided not to hear the case between TV studios and Cablevision over networked DVR service. While studios, including Paramount, Disney, NBC and CBS, believed a remote storage DVR would infringe on copyright law, the Supreme Court decided to back a District Court ruling which found that networked DVR did not violate copyright law. The decision is a big win for Cablevision, who will begin launching remote-storage DVR service later this summer.

MSNBC will finally broadcast in high definition. While MSNBC HD debuted yesterday on Cablevision, it will take the network at least two months to get the high definition broadcast to most markets. MSNBC President Phil Griffin noted that “If you want to be competitive in this game, it’s the price of entry.”

Michael Jackson’s death increased Internet usage by more than 4.2 million worldwide users per minute, in comparison to the normal 2 million visitors a minute. Web usage was so massive that AOL’s AIM messaging service crashed for 40 minutes, the LA Times went down, and TMZ’s traffic was more than 33% higher than its previous record high. The strain put on servers is important to note, as how much can the Internet infrastructure really take.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen took in $201.2 million to top the domestic box office. The summer blockbuster took in an additional $186 million internationally, for a global earning of $387.3 million. In its course, Michael Bay’s Transformers sequel demolished the record for a Wednesday opening, previously held by Spider-Man 2 with $152.4 million.

Microsoft has hired Morgan Staney to explore the sale of Razorfish. Razorfish, the digital ad agency Microsoft acquired when it purchased aQuantive, is currently valued between $600-700 million. Razorfish, which boasted sales of roughly $400 million last year, is the digital agency for companies like Nike, Kraft and Audi, and may come in conflict with Microsoft’s own agency Microsoft Advertising.

Informercial legend Billy Mays died yesterday at home in Florida. News of Mays death, famous for the OxiClean commercial, as well as Discovery Channel’s Pitchmen, spread on Twitter. His son Billy Mays III tweeted at “My dad didn’t wake up this morning.. I’m sure you’ll all hear about it. It hasn’t yet hit me but it’s about to” on Sunday morning.

Yesterday we lost two of our dearest pop-culture icons. Farah Fawcett, the subject of the best selling poster of all time and Michael Jackson, the musical force behind the best selling album of all time. Their untimely passings brought their extraordinary achievements into focus, and made me wonder, will anyone ever sell 12 million posters or 45 million albums ever again? It seems unlikely.

Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC unveiled the third Google Android based phone yesterday. Dubbed the Hero, the phone is similar to the iPhone and includes a 3.2 inch touchscreen and GPS. The phone will also support Adobe’s Flash, which is currently not offered by Apple’s iPhone.

The Professional Golf Association and Turner Sports have agreed to a contract extension that will give Turner broadcast rights for the PGA until 2019. In addition, Turner, which has access to early round PGA tour coverage, will continue to manage PGA.com. As part of the agreement, Turner will launch mobile and new media services to extend the PGA’s digital footprint.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen earned $60.6 million at the box office on its opening day. The sequel broke Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’s previous record of $44.2 million for a Wednesday opening by over $15 million. At its current rate, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen could surpass Spiderman 2’s $152.4 million record for a five day opening.

Microsoft announced that the Windows 7 will be significantly cheaper than its failed Vista OS. Windows 7 packages will run between $199.99 and $319.99, while upgrades will start at $119.99. To make up for Vista, a product which truly hurt the Windows brand, Microsoft will give customers who purchase a new PC before Windows 7 is released a free upgrade in October when it is released.

The Academy Awards announced that they will increase the amount of best picture nominees from five to ten. The move comes in an attempt to boost ratings for the broadcast of the Oscars, as well as to shed light on more films. Many believe that increased attention to more films during Oscar season may increase box office earnings.

Wired Editor Chris Anderson, known for his book “The Long Tail”, admitted to plagiarizing in his new book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price.” Material in Anderson’s book, which highlights free products of the digital age, features sections that closely resembled passages from WikiPedia. In his apology, Anderson said, “This is entirely my own screwup, and will be corrected.”

The YES Network, Cablevision and MLBAM have reached an agreement to let Cablevision subscribers live stream Yankees games free of charge. The aggreement comes as YES moves into the live-streaming market, and shows in-market opposition to Major League Baseball’s MLB.TV streaming service. However, the contract stipulates that only Cablevision customers who subscribe to the YES Network and have high speed broadband from Cablevision will be able to access games online.

Former Yahoo EVP and current LinkedIn President Jeff Weiner has been named the social networks CEO. Weiner will replace Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn. Hoffman, confident in the move, said Weiner “has been doing a lot of what a CEO does for months now.”