Here’s a handy helper for those following the fate of the Hulu premium online video service, whose noisy efforts to sell itself have gotten a lot of attention of late:

“In preliminary talks” = “hawking itself to one of a half dozen big moneybag tech companies who will visit with Hulu’s bankers and management to see its presentation at Morgan Stanley’s office in Century City in Los Angeles.”

Last Friday, for example, that meant a look-see for Microsoft execs, to show the software giant the story of how paying top dollar for the popular Hulu would be a great investment.

This week, sources said, Yahoo will get the expected gander at the books too, among the other companies targeted by Hulu as part of a sales process in its very early stages.

Among those companies on the short list, sources said, along with Microsoft and Yahoo are: Google, Verizon, AT&T and Amazon.

None of these should come as a surprise, since they all have a big interest in the digital distribution of content business.

Google is perhaps the most interesting and difficult of the group, due to both its massive YouTube unit and the even more massive interest by government regulators about its disturbing massiveness.

Amazon is the company that seems most suited as a Hulu buyer, since it already makes its business selling and distributing content. In addition, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar was a former exec — bringing a certain level of familiarity and presumably much less of the grumpy disgruntlement that he experienced with Hulu’s current media giant owners.

Microsoft seems like the longest shot and least enthusiastic, although it certainly could afford it.

As for Yahoo: Good lord, it needs something sexy to tell weary investors.

Not in the initial round, but other possible acquirers Hulu is targeting: Facebook, Netflix, Samsung and Liberty Media.

And definitely not among those kicking the tires: Disney, News Corp. and Comcast, the trio of partners who own Hulu, along with Providence Equity Partners.

The big question, of course, is whether media-focused Apple — a notorious buyer of almost nothing — would be interested in Hulu.

These blind dates with the best possible buyers will presumably give each insight into Hulu’s business and give Hulu information on what they are looking for.

Sources who have heard the pitch said Hulu is positioning itself as an inevitable competitor to cable, which seems an odd position to take, unless it can get regular access to the kind of top-drawer content that consumers want.

And that will be the most important issue for anyone buying Hulu: The time and terms of rights to the television and movie content on the site, which has been a critical part of its success.

Buyers I have interviewed said Hulu has to offer at least an 18-month license for its content and a pile of rights to hit shows to differentiate itself from competitors.

As Peter Kafka wrote, Hulu buyers would indeed get exclusive content, but with strings attached.

He also noted that the latest content licenses for Hulu’s owner/partners — Disney’s ABC and News Corp.’s Fox — have recently been completed, deals that will stay intact if Hulu is sold.

Unlike Netflix, which has had to pay top dollar for a small pile of premium content while deftly using a large archive of older content to attract subscribers, Hulu’s success has had a lot to do with more access to popular current shows offered by its media giant owners.

Those shows include TV hits such as “The Office” and “Glee.”

That access has become a point of contention with those owners, who have differed with Hulu management about what comes next for the mostly advertising-supported site, even though its slick product has been a clear hit with consumers.

Of course, some speculate that Hulu might not sell at all, just as it never went public as it had said it might do previously. In that case, it will be interesting to see what will become of Hulu once the music stops.

(And, if anyone would like to email me the Hulu presentation or notes on it, please do, so I can formulate a bid myself!)

But, until this deal churns slowly, leakily and loudly forward — let’s enjoy some apt Hulu content. As usual, the fun version of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” by the kids from “Glee” was not available on the site.

Thus, I selected frequent “Glee” guest star Gwyneth Paltrow belting out Joan Jett’s “Do You Wanna Touch Me” on the show, as a good alternate metaphor for the sales process:

They shouldn’t be.

Pandora has always been up front about the fact that royalties are its biggest expense. And that those fees increase in lockstep with the music service’s popularity.

But while spending half of every dollar it brings in on royalties is a burden, it could be worse. A lot worse.

Prior to the summer of 2009, when Pandora and other Web services negotiated a new royalty deal, Pandora’s music bill was more than 100 percent of its revenues.

Check out this table from Pandora’s S-1, which breaks out each line item in its P&L as a percent of revenue. Notice how brutal the first two quarters of 2009 were. And see how much more tolerable (or at least less awful) they became after July 2009, when Pandora got its new rates (click image to enlarge):

See? Now 50 percent doesn’t look that bad.

And while Pandora’s music fees are hefty, the system that generates those bills is really one of the company’s strengths.

That’s because unlike other music services, from Apple’s iTunes to Spotify, Pandora doesn’t have to negotiate with individual labels and publishers to use their stuff.

Instead, it takes advantage of a U.S. law that created a “compulsory license” for Internet radio. That allows anyone to stream any recorded music they want, as long as they’re willing to pay for it. And as long as they’re functioning as a “Webcaster” and not an on-demand “interactive service.”

The advantages of using the compulsory license are huge. It means Pandora never had to ask the big labels for permission to use their stuff, or pay out giant advances or equity stakes to get a deal done.

While the licenses do come with restrictions–that’s why Pandora doesn’t let listeners request individual songs, and limits the number of times users can skip a song per hour, etc.- they haven’t dissuaded some 80 million people from using the service.

Those licenses don’t exist outside of the U.S., which is one reason Web radio services are such a rarity everywhere else, and why Pandora may struggle with international expansion.

And the fees that Pandora does pay will escalate each year until 2015, when it has to negotiate a new royalty agreement with the music industry.

It’s always possible that the rates will get significantly worse for Webcasters then, and that Pandora ends up in the shape it was in prior to the summer of 2009.

But for the next four years, at least, Pandora thinks it can work with the music bills its users are generating. Now we’ll see if investors agree.

It’s not a complete failure, apparently, as Nokia will continue to support the service in six countries, including China. But it will pull the plug in 27 other countries. (It never arrived in the U.S.)

The idea, pushed in large part by Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, was that consumers would pay a premium for certain Nokia phones and get access to all-you-can-eat music.

A couple of problems, per Reuters: Consumers didn’t want it, and carriers didn’t support it.

It’s possible that the Nokia plan was sunk because of a complicated digital rights management scheme that more or less locked the music onto the phones. But it may be that people just aren’t that interested in paying for all-you-can-eat music, whether that payment is bundled into the price of the phone, or via a month-to-month subscription service.

In the U.S., there is no shortage of the latter–Rhapsody, Best Buy’s Napster, MOG, Rdio, Thumbplay, etc.–but they haven’t caught on despite years of effort. In Europe, for now, Spotify seems to be gaining some traction–people familiar with the company say it now has one million paying subscribers, up from 750,000 last fall, but that’s still not mainstream.

Subscription services were supposed to get more popular once they started playing nicely with Apple’s iPhone, but that has kicked in over the past couple of years without any noticeable bump. Now subscription advocates are pining for another boost from Google, which they imagine will end up partnering with one of the services instead of building its own.

And if Google wanted to, say, provide every Android buyer with a couple months of free subscription music, they argue, then subscriptions might finally catch on.

Could be! But I wouldn’t count on it.

The catch here is that the capability, which will be offered on Apple’s iPad as well as tablets running Google’s Android, will only work inside subscribers’ homes.

So you still can’t watch a live episode of “Two and a Half Men” on your iPad in the airport, but you will be able to watch it in your kitchen, while your better half watches “Frontline” in the living room. Or whatever.

It’s worth noting that Verizon announced its own version of this feature (with the same limitations), for its FiOS TV subscribers last summer, but has yet to roll it out.

Comcast will be demoing the feature later today at a Citigroup investors conference, but won’t be providing details about timing, or if there will be any programming restrictions on what you can watch on your tablet.

It’s possible there could be some holdouts, but the cable giant ought to be able to offer just about everything, since there’s no issue with carriage rights or ad loads, etc.–tablet watchers will be watching whatever’s already on live TV.

The killer feature, of course, would be the ability to do this on-the-go, but we’re not there yet, and it may take awhile to get there. Mobile rights for video–especially live video–are a whole different ball game.

Meantime, though, Comcast is offering a half-step–as previously promised, it will let traveling iPad users start to watch a selection of on-demand content, via its Xfinity TV app.

Comcast says it will offer some 3,000 TV shows and movies that iPad users can watch on-demand, over any network–AT&T’s 3G, or Time Warner Cable’s broadband, or whatever. Once that feature is up and running, which should be shortly, we’ll be able to compare that catalog to the ones that Netflix and Hulu Plus are offering for $7.99 a month.

And that’s the big picture here: Comcast and the other big cable providers, which continue to insist that cord-cutting isn’t real, want to make sure that it doesn’t become a reality, by offering their subscribers access to as much stuff, in as many places, as they can. It’s going to take years to find out whether that works or not, but best to start experimenting ASAP.

I had a hunch that Viacom sold off Harmonix, which makes the Rock Band games, at a steep discount last month. But I’m still surprised it was this cheap: I’m told that investment group Columbus Nova paid $49.99–the list price for “Rock Band 3″–and got the entire company.

There’s more to the story, of course: People familiar with the transaction tell me Harmonix’s buyers also assumed the game company’s liabilities. That includes expensive music rights fees, and responsibility for lots of unsold games and equipment sitting on warehouse shelves.

And I’m told that the deal is structured in a way that will let Viacom net something like $150 million in tax benefits, similar to the AOL/Bebo fire sale last year. Given that Viacom paid $175 million for Harmonix a few years ago, things could be worse.

[UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times reports that Viacom will actually receive a $50 million tax benefit, and offload $100 million in liabilities. That makes more sense, and I've since confirmed it myself. My apology for the error.]

Still, it’s a fire sale price no matter how you look at it. And that can’t be comforting to Harmonix’s remaining employees, who are likely going to be facing a very serious restructuring.

Columbus Nova’s PR reps wouldn’t comment on the sale terms (neither would Viacom) but pointed me to an earlier statement from the company, which said it was “really excited about backing the world-class team that has consistently produced such great games and helping them grow the company and its brands.”

While the news has been be out there for a month, Miramax officially confirmed this morning that former News Corp. exec Mike Lang was named CEO of the Hollywood movie company.

What will be interesting about that for digital content players will be to see exactly what the man who was deeply involved in deals to buy the Myspace social networking site and also create the Hulu premium video service will do with Miramax’s rich trove of more than 700 award-winning films, including “Shakespeare in Love” and “Pulp Fiction,” in its movie library.

Lang left his post as EVP of business development and strategy at Fox Entertainment, including its film studio, broadcast network, sports and cable channel, earlier this year.

BoomTown spoke to him last night about his new job, which came after he advised the group that finally won Miramax–Filmyard Holdings.

“We are trying to take this company to the next level by exploring not only our traditional options, but our digital ones,” he said.

Miramax will not be aggressive in making new movies, but in taking advantage of the sequel rights it has to a number of hits, as well as the existing movies, which include four of the last 15 Best Picture Oscar winners.

“Our strategy is still emerging, but we want to exploit our assets in a variety of ways,” said Lang, who noted that could include everything from subscription deals with online video services, such as Netflix and Amazon, to digital content lockers in the cloud.

“We want people to be able to access our content across multiple medias,” he said. “We’ll take any payment, of course, but we also have to be smart about how we do these things.”

Lang, who has always had a foot in both worlds, said he thinks that digital media could develop similarly to the way traditional media has.

“There is no reason to think that digital will not emulate older media, with different windows in which subscribers watch content,” he said.

But, said Lang, he also thinks there is still life in physical media, such as Blu-ray players.

Since the deal just closed with former Miramax owner Disney, there are no employees yet for the Santa Monica, Calif.-based company.

But once he staffs up, Langs said he hopes to present a different picture of Hollywood to the digerati than the more typical wary hostility.

“Our goal really is we want to send a signal that we are a different company,” said Lang. “Not only about digital, but in being an innovative company.”

Here is the official press release about Lang:

MICHAEL LANG NAMED MIRAMAX CEO

SANTA MONICA, CA–December 8, 2010–Miramax today announced that Michael Lang has been appointed chief executive officer, effective immediately. Lang will be based at the new Miramax headquarters in Santa Monica and will oversee the renowned Miramax film library, which was acquired by Filmyard Holdings on December 3, 2010.

“I have known and worked closely with Mike for almost 20 years and have always respected his talents,” said Richard Nanula, chairman of Miramax and a principal at Colony Capital. “We are confident that he is the right person to lead Miramax in its next phase of growth.”

“I have always admired the Miramax library, which includes many respected titles and award-winning films,” said Lang. “Based on the quality of these assets, I believe bringing new life to this library–by working with traditional and new partners–will be an exciting and unprecedented story of growth and innovation. I am honored by this opportunity, and I look forward to working with my partners as we build a new kind of media company.”

Lang, 45, most recently served as a consultant to Filmyard in its acquisition of Miramax. Prior to that, he was EVP, Business Development and Strategy at Fox Entertainment, responsible for strategic initiatives across News Corp.’s entertainment assets, including Fox’s film studio, broadcast network, sports and cable channels. Lang played key roles in the acquisition of MySpace and the formation of the MySpace Music joint venture, and he led the creation of Hulu, with major broadcast partners. In addition, Lang was involved in Fox’s mobile, digital and video game initiatives. He joined Fox in 2004.

Prior to Fox, Lang served as a consultant on media-related investments. In the late ’90s, he was a founding executive of Z.com. Lang began his career at The Walt Disney Company in Strategic Planning. Lang earned his MBA with high distinction at Harvard Business School and he holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Claremont McKenna College.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

“We’re pleased to announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Widevine,” the company said in a post to its blog. “The Widevine team has worked to provide a better video delivery experience for businesses of all kinds: from the studios that create your favorite shows and movies, to the cable systems and channels that broadcast them online and on TV, to the hardware manufacturers that let you watch that content on a variety of devices. By forging partnerships across the entire ecosystem, Widevine has made on demand services more efficient and secure for media companies, and ultimately more available and convenient for users.”

For Google, which ramped up its video efforts with the launch of Google TV last month, the acquisition is an important one for bolstering its streaming video offerings. The Seattle-based Widevine specializes in digital video optimization and digital rights management, and its services are used by everyone from Netflix and NBC.com to AT&T.

Interesting to see Google snapping up a video DRM company (Widevine did Flash DRM before Adobe), considering its purchase of On2 last year and its subsequent release of On2′s VP8 video codec as an open standard (something that did not go over well at MPEG-LA, the consortium that controls the AVC/H.264 video standard).

The deal is the latest in a string of pacts that are fast transforming Netflix into a true Web-based movie channel. With streaming rights to films from Paramount, Lionsgate, Sony, Disney and MGM studios, and a new streaming-only service priced at $7.99 a month, the company is increasingly becoming more competitive with the cable incumbents.

Good question, says EMI Music, the label that distributes the band’s music.

Apple has exclusive digital rights for the Beatles “into 2011,” says spokesman Dylan Jones, and he notes that the exclusivity doesn’t expire on the first of January. But he confirms that the exclusivity does indeed have an expiration date.

So when that date comes, we should expect to see the Beatles everywhere else you can get music online, right? Namely Amazon, and the subscription services that rent music by the month, like Spotify, Rhapsody and Microsoft’s Zune? Or Google, if and when it launches its music service?

“That’s a question, isn’t it,” Jones says, and doesn’t offer more.

Couple of theories here:

• The easiest explanation is that the Beatles music will follow the path of other digital exclusives, and become widely available after Apple gets its run.
• It’s also possible that Apple and the Beatles will renew their exclusive before it expires. That hasn’t happened before, but if Steve Jobs really, really wants to make it work, I guess he could.
• The most intriguing possibility: The Beatles leave iTunes once their deal ends–and don’t come back to digital again. Seems silly, but big traditional media loves “windowing” their content, and I suppose someone might convince the band this would be a clever way to go–show up, make a splash, walk away and then try it again down the road, like a band that’s always going on a farewell tour. Hope not!

The NLRB, an independent federal agency that settles disputes between private-sector employers and employees, said the supervisor questioned the employee about a customer complaint on her work but that the employer illegally denied her representation from her union during the probe. The employee later posted the negative remark about the supervisor on her personal Facebook page from her home computer.

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A 2005 California law bans those under 18 from buying or renting violent videogames that appeal to “a deviant or morbid interest in minors.” Lower courts struck down the law, under precedent authorizing government to restrict youth from only one type of material, obscene sexual content.

In seeking the law’s reinstatement, Zackery Morazzini, a deputy state attorney general, told the court: “California is no less concerned with a minor’s access to the deviant level of violence that is presented in a certain category of video games” than it is with sexually explicit material.

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But Hulu Plus can’t show subscribers all of the episodes of all the shows in Hulu’s catalog. Rights issues mean that certain shows will flit on and off the service, and it’s up to subscribers to figure that out for themselves.

Example: “Modern Family,” ABC’s award-winning hit sitcom, disappeared from both Hulu and Hulu Plus this summer after its first season. Now it’s back. But both services are only offering shows from the current season–there’s no way to go back and catch up on last year’s shows, even if you’re paying.

I think, but haven’t been able to confirm, that this has to do with DVD sales for the show, which is produced by News Corp.’s (NWS) 20th Century Fox. I’ve got queries into both Fox and Disney’s (DIS) ABC to try to confirm.

Meantime, here’s what Hulu has to say:

Yes, the first season of Modern Family is no longer on Hulu Plus. We acknowledge this can sometimes be confusing for TV fans, so we do all we can to provide as much advance notice as possible when shows are slated to come down. Below is an example from our Saturday Night Live show page on Hulu Plus. You’ll notice it says “New episodes are posted Sunday afternoons and are available for 17 days.” This is consistent across all our content.

Of course, we keep content on Hulu and Hulu Plus for as long as possible. We can’t offer a specific reasons why a particular video may be taken down, as streaming clearances differ from show to show.

And sure enough, if you head to each show’s Hulu page, you’ll find a different set of availabilities.

Regular Hulu users can only see the last five episodes of “The Family Guy,” for instance, while Hulu Plus subscribers can see all nine seasons. But even if you’re a paying customer, Hulu can only show you five episodes of “The Simpsons,” period.

Meanwhile, the last season of “Lost” fell off both the free and paid services last month, and the other five seasons will go away at the end of the year. Etc.

To be fair to Hulu, it’s certainly not the only service negotiating the frustrating rights/windows patchwork. Everyone who deals with digital media has to navigate this stuff. And none of it makes sense to viewers who just want to watch their shows, when they want to watch them.

But the patchwork is a bigger deal for Hulu, because the service’s primary pitch is that it’s a one-stop shop for all your TV viewing (or at least your broadcast TV viewing). Instead it’s really closer to a half-stocked Super Target: There’s a lot of stuff in there, but you still may not find what you need.

Hulu competitor Netflix (NFLX) offers lots of TV shows via its paid streaming service, too. But it pointedly doesn’t play up the presence of any particular show–Reed Hastings and company simply tell consumers that they’ll find shows they like.

But if you’ve ponied up $10 a month for Hulu Plus and find that you still can’t watch a show that aired a few months ago, you may not be cool with that at all.

Gaps in Hulu’s free service may not be as frustrating for users, because they’re not out any cash. But it is a problem for the joint venture as it ponders a public offering, premised on the notion that its TV partners/owners–ABC, Fox and GE/Comcast’s NBC–are in it for the long haul.

But if Hulu can’t tell users that it has all the rights it needs, how can it convince investors?

Meanwhile, a similarly confusing story:

That’s not much of a surprise, given the relentless marketing campaign by the makers of “The Social Network,” which opened wide last Friday. It has garnered terrific critical acclaim.

Still, BoomTown was quite surprised to see a mention of the film on one of my favorite celebrity sites, TMZ.com.

Of course, because it is gossip-saturated, TMZ featured it as one of its naughty regular features called “Who’d You Rather?”

As in…well, you get the point.

This time they pitted Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg against the Winklevoss twins in a “Facebook Fight.”

“As part of the movie ‘The Social Network,’ twin brothers Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss claim their Harvard [University] classmate Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea and created what is now this little website called Facebook,” TMZ wrote.

Also surprising, as you can see from the screenshot above, given what hunks of dudeness the Winklevii clearly are, is that Zuckerberg seems to be attracting one-third of the votes compared with their two-thirds.

And since there are two of them, the billionaire social networking wunderkind could be considered tied with the brothers!

Sweet justice after the slamming the Winklevii have been giving Zuckerberg in the media of late, even though they had signed a confidentiality agreement after their first $65 million settlement with him?

The Winklevii are trying to have that overturned and are inexplicably going for more, of course, which should keep the themes of the movie resonating for a while.

That will also be true if “The Social Network” garners some award nominations, especially the Oscar.

Also interesting will be to see if the movie will perform well this weekend or will drop off. It’s so far proved popular in the big cities on the coasts and in Silicon Valley, but now it has to go wide to make some real dough.

But, for sure, it will be on television eventually. Today, the FX cable network said it had bought the broadcast premiere rights to the movie.

So says Billboard’s Ed Christman, who has been talking to label executives familiar with Google’s (GOOG) proposals for its yet-to-be-launched service. The music industry hasn’t agreed to any of this yet, so the gap between “like to” and “will be” could be significant. But it’s worth reading Christman’s piece to get a sense of what the Google guys are looking for.

In short:

• Google would like to sell music a track at a time, just as Apple’s iTunes does.
• Google would like to give users the ability to listen to any track all the way through, at least once, as MySpace Music does, and Lala did before Apple (AAPL) acquired it and shut it down. Google’s music search service provides free full plays for some songs but not others.
• Google would like to offer a $25 a year “locker service,” where any music you own, no matter where you procured it, would be stored on an Internet server. You could then listen to a stream of the song no matter where you where, via a Web player or a mobile phone.
• Google would like to let subscribers share their music with their friends, allowing them to listen to a song a single time.

All of which sounds pretty good. And all of which sounds like concepts that the labels would be fine with, in theory–even the part about letting you access songs you “shared” via P2P services.

The sticking point, of course, will be money: How much will the labels demand up front, how much will they charge per user or per use, and how will the money be split up between different rights holders?

The last part is a question that often gets ignored when people start spitballing ideas for music services, but it’s crucial, because music rights are a complicated web that tangles up even the best intentions. Even if the “labels” agree to Google’s terms, that likely won’t be enough, because the “labels” don’t usually own songs outright–any given song or catalog may have multiple owners.

That’s not a problem if you simply want to open up another download store, or even a streaming subscription service, because there’s a broad consensus about how to split up the pennies that those generate. But with something new, like the locker/sharing proposal, there are a lot of cats to herd. Which makes this stuff interesting but far from definitive.

If you’re in a select group, that is. One person familiar with the site, owned by a joint venture of broadcasters and Providence Equity Partners, says the initial test could be limited to 10,000 people.

The Hulu Plus pitch, as I’ve previously reported: $9.95 a month for access to a deeper catalog of shows than the free service currently offers, plus the ability to watch it on devices other than a laptop or PC, including Apple’s (AAPL) iPad. Other reports this month indicate that the service may also be available on Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox and Sony’s (SNE) PS3 game consoles.

I’m also told that Hulu’s network owners–GE’s (GE) NBC, Disney’s (DIS) ABC and News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox–are still hammering out rights deals for particular shows. So it’s possible that the launch could be pushed back or that the service will have weird gaps in its catalog when it does launch.

One example of a possible programming stumbling block: Viacom’s (VIA) “Comedy Central” has rights to older episodes of NBC’s “30 Rock.”

Hulu says it is already turning a profit from ad sales and is on track to generate more than $200 million in revenue this year. A successful subscription service would beef up those numbers.

It would also accomplish an equally important goal for CEO Jason Kilar: Mollifying his network owners, who worry that Hulu is cutting into their existing businesses, including licensing fees, DVD sales and conventional TV advertising. Hulu and its network partners would split the $10-per-head fee, I’m told, though I don’t know the formula the JV will use to split up the dollars.

No comment from Hulu. The Wall Street Journal is also reporting on Hulu’s plans.

In his memo, Hustinx criticizes the secrecy of the talks from which ACTA arose and worries that as an international treaty to fight digital piracy, the agreement is in danger of running afoul of European Union privacy and data protection law requirements.

“Privacy and data protection must be taken into account from the very beginning of the negotiations, not when the schemes and procedures have been defined and agreed and it is therefore too late to find alternative, privacy compliant solutions,” Hustinx wrote.

“While intellectual property is important to society and must be protected,” he added, “it should not be placed above individuals’ fundamental rights to privacy, data protection, and other rights such as presumption of innocence, effective judicial protection and freedom of expression.”

Evidently, that’s exactly where IP has been placed in the current draft of ACTA, which seems to be designed to encourage ISPs to monitor their customers’ Internet use for illegal file-sharing and potentially, to blackball repeat offenders on their networks.

“Insofar as the current draft of ACTA includes or at least indirectly pushes for three strikes Internet disconnection policies, ACTA would profoundly restrict the fundamental rights and freedoms of European citizens, most notably the protection of personal data and privacy,” Hustinx wrote.

“The EDPS takes the view that three strikes Internet disconnection policies are not necessary to achieve the purpose of enforcing intellectual property rights,” he concluded. “The EDPS is convinced that alternative, less intrusive solutions exist or, at least, that the envisaged policies can be performed in a less intrusive manner or at a more limited scope, notably through the form of targeted ad hoc monitoring.”

Music videos are so popular on Google’s (GOOG) video site, in fact, that YouTube had to break its most watched list into two lists–music videos and everything else. If it hadn’t, then people like you and me, who have only a vague idea who Pitbull and Keri Hilson are, would have been totally baffled.

Speaking of baffling, you’ll note that two of the 10 videos below aren’t actually from YouTube at all, but from France’s DailyMotion. For whatever reason–at this point I’ve basically given up trying to figure out the vagaries of YouTube’s rights and clearances–YouTube still isn’t letting people embed the Susan Boyle clip. And U.S. viewers, at least, can’t watch the Hilson clip at all. Go figure.

Most Watched YouTube videos (Global):

1. Susan Boyle – Britain’s Got Talent (120+ million views)

2. David After Dentist (37+ million views)

3. JK Wedding Entrance Dance (33+ million views)

4. New Moon Movie Trailer (31+ million views)

5. Evian Roller Babies (27+ million views)

Most Watched music videos on YouTube (Global):

1. Pitbull “I Know You Want Me” (82+ million views)

2. Miley Cyrus “The Climb” (64+ million views)

3. Miley Cyrus “Party in the U.S.A.” (54+ million views)

4. The Lonely Island “I’m on a Boat” (48+ million views)

5. Keri Hilson “Knock You Down” (35+ million views)

The company had been sued by EMI earlier in the week, after it came to light that BlueBeat had been selling Beatles tracks and other music for 25 cents a track, and offering free streaming of albums from the Fab Four and other groups. To date, no online music site has the rights to sell or stream the Beatles music.

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The judge presiding over the case, who’d been urged by the U.S. Department of Justice to reject an earlier version of the settlement, set that date during a morning hearing so brief that when MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka asked Google CEO Eric Schmidt about it at a company roundtable this morning, Schmidt was unaware a date had been set. When Peter broke the news to him, Schmidt didn’t have much of a comment, but he did speak briefly about the settlement and Google’s view of it earlier in the morning.

From Peter’s paraphrased notes on the session:

With respect to book search, we were doing something that we thought was appropriate. We were sued, and after three years of discussion we’ve come to a settlement. This is perfectly normal. From our perspective, this is a settlement we like, it’s a settlement we think they’ll like, and we’ll hear what the court says, within minutes. Let me reframe your question: There’s nothing particularly exclusive about what we’re doing. The rights registry we’re doing is for the benefit of orphan works. “It’s not a particularly good business for us. We’re doing it because we think it’s the right thing to do.” We don’t think the settlement is perfect, but we think it’s good.

Though it’s not yet clear what form the revised settlement might take or what adjusted terms are being discussed, Google and the authors and publishers it has allied with it have quite a few critics to appease, including academics, librarians, privacy advocates, would-be rivals and the French and German governments.

Via Reuters/Billboard:

Guns N’ Roses and Universal Music Group’s Interscope-Geffen A&M label were sued by British label Independiente and the U.S. arm of Domino Recording Company, who own the licensing rights to songs by German electronic musician Ulrich Schnauss.

Singer Axl Rose and Guns N’ Roses band members and album producers copied portions of two of Schnauss songs–”Wherever You Are” and “A Strangely Isolated Place”–for a song used on the band’s last album called “Riad N’ the Bedouins,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit, filed on Friday but made available on Monday, seeks $1 million in damages. A spokesperson for Interscope-Geffen A&M, owned by Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, was not available for comment.

You might have thought the labels suing the band and Universal Music would have done so last fall, when there was a biggish to-do about the album and when the band and Universal Music were siccing the federal government on bloggers who posted links to unauthorized MP3s from the album.

Anyway, it’s another good opportunity to remind the young people of today why the young people of 20 years ago were really into Guns N’ Roses: They used to be great!

Also, I am still trying to track down a recording of any of the songs from the Axl Rose-inspired “White Trash Wins Lotto,” the best musical I’ve ever seen (the version I saw featured a pre-“Ratatouille” Patton Oswalt, I think). Any help greatly appreciated…

To wit, Google’s announcement Monday of a number of concessions to the European Union, which seems a bit dubious of the whole thing. In a letter to several publisher associations in Europe, the company invited two non-U.S. representatives to join the board that will oversee the book rights registry that is to distribute royalties from digital book sales under terms proposed by the settlement. The company also promised to seek their permission before digitally publishing European works still protected by copyrights.

“Books that are commercially available in Europe will be treated as commercially available under the Settlement,” Google (GOOG) explained. “Such books can only be displayed to US users if expressly authorised by rights holders.”

Quite a concession, given Google’s plans to create a so-called “last library,” but clearly necessary with opposition to the deal abroad so pronounced. Already, Germany has filed an objection to it, saying the agreement would “irrevocably alter the landscape of international copyright law.” And now France is about to do the same.

“Google will have a monopoly digitalising European orphan works without permission,” Nicolas Georges, director for books and libraries at the French Culture Ministry, told Reuters. “Google has the power to determine which work will be in its database or not. For example, some works that are not commercial may be removed by Google.”

Seems Google’s effort to establish a de facto worldwide copyright regime isn’t going to be quite as easy as the company had hoped.

Amazon has explained why it has been deleting some novels from its customers’ Kindles: It shouldn’t have been selling them in the first place.

Amazon (AMZN) says the copies of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984″ it removed without warning from some Kindles this week are “illegal” because the publisher didn’t have the rights to sell them.

Won’t happen again, the e-commerce giant says. Sort of:

These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books. When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers. We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances.

Here’s the thing: I refrained from making any Orwell references when I wrote about this earlier today. But doesn’t this statement have a hint of Newspeak to it?

If Amazon wanted to reassure customers worried that digital media they buy from the company might disappear, unannounced, it could do so very easily. It could just say: “We won’t be taking away stuff we sell you ever again. You buy it, you own it. Doesn’t matter if it’s a book, a CD, or a collection of bytes.”

Because, as I noted before, that’s basically what the Kindle license already says: Amazon says it “grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content.” The company doesn’t seem to add any caveats that I can see.

I’m hoping Amazon’s language here is just an awkward bit of PRspeak, and not a lawyerly way of reserving the right to pull stuff off Kindles sometime down the road. But I’ve asked, and will let you know if I hear back.