Phew! EMI says that as part of the agreement, “all legal disputes between the band and the company have been settled.” Which means that if you were worried about the band’s music disappearing from Apple’s iTunes, you can breathe easy.

Of course, it was unlikely that Pink Floyd’s music really was going to leave the world’s biggest music store, even though part of the dispute between the band and the label had to do with online sales: Supposedly, the band was upset that its music was being sold as individual tracks on iTunes, instead of in album-only form.

But that argument never really rang true to me: Sure, it’s great fun to space out to all of “Dark Side of the Moon” in one sitting, but it’s an awful lot to insist that people have to listen to or buy the whole thing. Especially since no one else does that anymore. Not even Radiohead!

In any case, a check seems to have resolved the band’s misgivings, and you can still buy “Money” as a standalone track at iTunes.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit are seeking records related to Hurd’s departure from HP in August, including a letter that accused him of sexually harassing Jodie Fisher, a sometimes-actress who worked as a contractor for HP. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is also looking into the possibility that Hurd told Fisher about HP’s then-confidential plans to acquire IT services firm EDS.

Hurd has been trying to keep the letter from being made public, and argued to the judge that since it is his personal property, he should be allowed to join the lawsuit as a party to that end. In the motion, Hurd’s lawyers argue that the letter was sent to “achieve private resolution of a potential dispute” between Hurd and Fisher.

The issue gets to the heart of a longstanding argument: Who should pay for the Internet? That debate is getting more pointed as a flood of video drives up the volume of traffic that companies such as Comcast Corp. must carry.

On Monday, Level 3 Communications Inc.–an Internet network operator that recently announced a deal to help Netflix Inc. stream and store its online movies and TV shows–complained that Comcast has slapped it with a new charge to deliver that video to customers.

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Just days after a Turkish court lifted a more than two-year ban on YouTube, Turks attempting to directly access YouTube on Tuesday evening again encountered a blank screen with a message informing them that YouTube was blocked as part of a May 2008 court order. That ruling had demanded the company, a unit of Google Inc., should remove various videos considered insulting to the republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, worldwide.

Hours later, however, the site was accessible again. The four videos had been removed from the site two years ago. Officials at Turkey’s Telecommunications Transmission Directorate could not be reached for comment. A spokesman for Google also declined to comment. The two sides are due to meet later in the week for talks.

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Here’s the release:

PING Golf Announces Trademark Agreement With Apple

PHOENIX, Sept. 1 /PRNewswire/ — PING and its parent company, Karsten Manufacturing Corporation, announced today that they have entered into an agreement with Apple under which Apple will use the PING trademark in connection with Apple’s innovative new social music discovery feature in iTunes. Apple introduced the iTunes PING feature today.

Founded in 1959, PING is a famous premium brand that holds more than 1000 trademark registrations around the world, many related to golf equipment. The company also owns trademark rights in PING for social networking and other online services.

This announcement involves two companies that were founded by visionaries who created products that greatly impacted their industries. Karsten Solheim invented the PING® putter in his Redwood City, California garage and went on to revolutionize the golf equipment industry. The groundbreaking first Apple® computer was developed in nearby Palo Alto in 1976.

“We are pleased to enter into this agreement with Apple,” said John Solheim, Chairman and CEO of Karsten Manufacturing Corporation and PING. “Like PING, Apple carries a reputation for innovation and quality. I have always had great respect for companies that have changed and improved the ways things are done and I continue to model PING along those lines. Apple is a truly great example of this kind of enterprise.”

“This is a very material step in our litigation against Microsoft. Put simply: i4i’s patent is clearly and unequivocally valid,” i4i chairman Loudon Owen said in a statement. “Even though Microsoft attacked i4i’s patent claims with its full arsenal, the Patent Office agreed with i4i and confirmed the validity of our ’449 patent.”

The XML technology covered by the patent might be “obscure,” as Microsoft (MSFT) has argued, but that doesn’t mean it’s not patentable. This being the case, Microsoft would seem to be liable for its transgression: Incorporating i4i’s “obscure” patented technology into Word 2003 and Word 2007.

A tough break for Microsoft, which was ordered last year to pay i4i $200 million for doing so.

The company’s only recourse now it seems is to appeal to the Supreme Court, something it appears to be considering, according to Director of Public Affairs Kevin Kutz. Said Kutz: “We are disappointed, but there still remain important matters of patent law at stake, and we are considering our options to get them addressed, including a petition to the Supreme Court.”

Less than two days after pulling books published by Macmillan in a dispute over e-book pricing, Amazon has conceded.

The world’s dominant e-commerce company says it has agreed to Macmillan’s demands to sell its e-books at a higher price–and in doing so, has made a tacit admission that e-book prices will rise across the board.

That’s because most of the industry’s big players have embraced a similar plan, advanced by Apple (AAPL) to support its iPad launch, to sell e-books for $12.99 and $14.99 instead of the $9.99 Amazon (AMZN) had been pushing.

In an extraordinary statement published on Amazon’s site, the retailer says that it “will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books.”

No word yet from the other big publishers that have sided with Apple in the e-book pricing war–Pearson’s Penguin Group, News Corp.’s (NWS) HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group and CBS’s (CBS) Simon & Schuster. But keep in mind Steve Jobs’s all-knowing pronouncement about Amazon and Apple e-books: “The prices will be the same.”

Also bear in mind that publishers will actually make less money with the Apple pricing plan. Under the old plan, they sold books to Amazon for around $15 wholesale, and Amazon took a loss in order to retail them for $9.99. Under the new plan, the publishers will get closer to $10 per book.

But the publishers are so freaked out by the parable of the music labels, in which Apple replaced $15 CDs with $1 songs, that they are willing to take the hit in order to maintain some control of their digital pricing.

Odd as this sounds, there’s logic to it, since e-book sales will be small for some time and publishers think that this strategy will help keep the prices up when buyers really do embrace digital.

(Aside: The notion that digital pricing should be dirt cheap simply because it doesn’t cost publishers–or music labels, or Hollywood studios, or whatever–very much to distribute bits, is facile. If you don’t believe me, try ordering a vegetarian entree the next time you go out to dinner, and then tell your waiter you refuse to pay full price because you know that vegetables cost much less than meat. It may be dumb for publishers to try to keep digital prices high, but it’s equally stupid to demand that they lower them on principle.)

It will be interesting to see what Kindle buyers make of the impending price hike, particularly since so many of them are price-conscious consumers who prefer to pay nothing at all for their books.

Maybe, says CNET’s Greg Sandoval. He reports that Viacom’s attorneys have unearthed emails that indicate that YouTube employees uploaded copyrighted material to the site and that “managers” knew there was copyrighted stuff on the site but didn’t do anything about it.

Those allegations happen to be key parts of Viacom’s (VIA) suit against Google (GOOG) and YouTube, and a good part of what the company has been looking for in the discovery/deposition process that has stretched on for more than a year and is slated to extend through the end of 2009.

Viacom has argued that senior YouTube employees, including cofounders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, knew full well that their site was full of copyrighted material and not only didn’t try to prevent it, but at some point even encouraged it.

So what exactly do the emails say? I don’t know. Sandoval is summarizing the documents, not reproducing them. And if I’m reading his story correctly, he may not have seen them either, but may be relying on someone else’s description of them. (That said, in a separate story, Sandoval does reproduce parts of Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s deposition from the same case.)

Here’s his description:

Lawyers working on a $1 billion copyright lawsuit filed by Viacom against Google’s YouTube may have uncovered evidence that employees of the video site were among those who uploaded unauthorized content to YouTube.

In addition, internal YouTube e-mails indicate that YouTube managers knew and discussed the existence of unauthorized content on the site with employees but chose not to remove the material, three sources with knowledge of the case told CNET.

The e-mails, according to the sources who asked for anonymity because of the ongoing litigation, surfaced during an exchange of information between the two sides of the legal dispute.

I’ve asked Sandoval for more information about the emails he’s referring to, but I don’t expect him to say much; anyone who released documents from discovery would be violating a court order. Viacom had no comment. Here’s YouTube’s comment, via CNET: “The characterizations of the supposed evidence, made in violation of a court order, are wrong, misleading, or lack important context and notably come on the heels of a series of significant setbacks for the plaintiffs. The evidence will show that we go above and beyond our legal obligations to protect the rights of content owners.”

Google has reached a settlement with a British licensing group in a dispute over royalty payments, which means that YouTube’s U.K. outpost will begin showing licensed music videos again. The clips disappeared five months ago when YouTube and PRS for Music, the U.K. body that collects money on behalf of songwriters, couldn’t come to terms.

Google (GOOG) executives wouldn’t disclose how much they’re paying songwriters for the rights to play videos that feature their songs, but said they would be cutting PRS for Music a single check that covers the length of the deal. The new pact will extend through June 2012 and will retroactively stretch back to the beginning of this year.

The deal may provide a blueprint for resolving a similar dispute between the video site and a German rights society. But I’m not sure it will do much for the one Google is still (still!) stuck in with Warner Music Group (WMG).

Meanwhile, this video doesn’t feature a British composer or performer and wasn’t shot in Britain. No connection at all, really. But if you like Lou Reed, louche ’70s fashion and/or awesome ’70s facial hair, you’re gonna like it.

But in the end, the maker of the BlackBerry line of smart phones ended up licensing them anyway.

This morning, RIM said it will pay Visto $267.5 million to resolve the long-running patent dispute and purchase a license for the intellectual property at issue. The deal, expected to close next week, will end all lawsuits still in court, resolving an issue that, had it turned truly ugly, could have shut down RIM’s BlackBerry email service.

Amazon (AMZN) hasn’t yet commented on the settlement beyond the filing, which offers little more information than that it was “unanticipated” and will be charged to “other operating expense” in the second quarter.

Microsoft and the European Commission have canceled a face-to-face hearing in an antitrust case pending against the company over a scheduling dispute, of all things. Seems Microsoft is unhappy with the date of the hearing, which it says falls during a time when key senior regulators will be unable to attend. “The dates the Commission selected for our hearing, June 3-5, coincide with the most important worldwide intergovernmental competition law meeting, the International Competition Network meeting,” Dave Heiner, vice president and deputy general counsel at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post. “As a result, it appears that many of the most influential Commission and national competition officials with the greatest interest in our case will be in Zurich and so unable to attend our hearing in Brussels.”

Microsoft (MSFT) asked the EC to reschedule. It refused, claiming June 3-5 are the only dates that a suitable room is available in Brussels for a hearing. Which is, of course, ridiculous. But no more so than Microsoft’s argument that the hearing will suffer from the absence of European decision-makers, says Thomas Vinje, counsel for Opera, a complainant in the case. Because, in all likelihood, those folks wouldn’t have attended anyway. “Such people simply don’t attend such hearings, and Microsoft knows it,” Vinje told the Financial Times. “The undoubted truth must simply be that Microsoft is afraid of facing the questions and evidence it would face from the Commission and from those aligned against it.”

No way, says reader Joy Sherman, who insists that they’re “all over” YouTube, and pointed me to a clip from WMG’s new Green Day album.

And sure enough, there’s the video for “Know Your Enemy,” the new single from one of the label’s biggest acts.

But I’m not sure about the “all over” part. I can find one live version that’s pretty good. But the other clips I’ve found with the same label are either bait and switches or appear to be disabled in some way.

So. You can find some Warner’s stuff on YouTube, some of the time. But aren’t all of  Warner’s videos–and songs–supposed to be off of YouTube altogether, the result of a licensing dispute that flared up in December?

No official comment from either the label or the video site. But the unofficial story seems to be this: YouTube has variety of methods to take down content that’s not supposed to be on the site, including its ContentID system, which can automate the process for copyright owners that use it–that’s why YouTube wasn’t completely overrun with clips from NBC’s Olympics coverage last summer and why very little footage from ABC’s Oscars coverage made it onto the site earlier this year.

And Warner Music Group (WMG) is a ContentID user. But the system isn’t foolproof, and it’s bound to work much better when YouTube and the content owner are working together instead of fighting over royalties and revenue splits.

So here’s the Green Day video that’s not supposed to be on YouTube, and may not be for much longer once I post it. So enjoy while you can:

And, per MTV VP’s John Loscalzo’s request, I’ll note that Viacom’s video site has a perfectly legally version of the song that won’t get taken down. You can see it here.

At the time, anyway. A patent dispute with Applied Nanotech soon stalled SED TV’s commercial debut. Which was a nasty break for Canon. With a performance and picture quality said to be far higher than LCD or plasma, SED was vital to expanding the company’s presence in the digital living room, which, lets face it, never extended much beyond digital cameras and printers.

Well, Canon’s big plans for the digital television business are back on track again. Applied Nanotech has dropped its claims against the company, saying to continue litigation “would probably be a futile effort.” And that means Canon is now free to bring SED TVs to market, some three years after first announcing plans to do so. Question now is this: Is it three years too late? With LCD and plasma displays more affordable, SED has lost quite a bit of its competitive edge. And with a decline in TV prices prompting profit warnings from the likes of Sony (SNE) and Panasonic (PC), the TV business isn’t looking too inviting.