Week in review: Microsoft's memos

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by the music and movie industries of contributing to widespread copyright infringement by people who used its software to download songs and films.

Under the terms of the agreement, Grokster will immediately stop supporting its file-swapping network, and Grokster's owners will be responsible for paying a total of $50 million in damages to movie studios, record labels and music publishers.

Although the settlement is a significant step toward bringing the four-year legal case to a close, the lawsuit is not over yet. Morpheus parent StreamCast remains operating, and it has previously indicated that it would continue fighting the case in lower courts.

As Grokster fades from the landscape, a recording industry veteran sees a new future for the music industry. Jac Holzman's Cordless Recordings is the first all-digital music label operated by a major record company, the Warner Music Group, launching on the Web and on digital music services such as iTunes and RealNetworks' Rhapsody.

Music from the label's first six bands is being sold only online for now, in three-song "clusters" instead of full albums. Instead of big tours, the bands will be promoted on blogs and sites like MySpace. More eyebrow-raising from the traditional big labels' perspective, artists get to keep ownership of the master recordings they release under Cordless.

As for that old stalwart of music, radio, the future is already on the air. But hardly anyone is listening.

The release of digital radio is widely viewed inside the broadcast radio industry as a critical response to other digital technologies, which are capturing a growing share of radio listeners' attention.

The technology essentially does for AM and FM radio what digital, high-definition television does for TV. The quality of the broadcast goes up substantially, eliminating static and providing near-CD quality richness of sound.

The problem lies in actually hearing the changes. More than 570 stations around the county are now broadcasting in the new digital radio format, but only a relative handful of actual digital radio receivers have been sold, or are even available to consumers who want to buy them.

Also of note
A new worm that propagates by exploiting security vulnerabilities in Web server software is attacking Linux systems...The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by a programmer who sued his former employer for changing his programs' source code...Net phone companies won't be forced to cut off callers who can't dial into the enhanced 911 network by Nov. 28.