Sunnyvale, Calif. - Billionaire financier Carl Icahn on Friday laid out his plans should he gain control of Yahoo, including disposing of an employee severance plan that he called "perverse," replacing CEO Jerry Yang and offering publicly to sell Yahoo to Microsoft in a "friendly and cooperative transaction."
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Seattle - The investigations being conducted by copyright holders on file-sharing networks to discover instances of infringement are flawed, and can mistakenly identify innocent parties, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Washington. [more..]

Los Angeles - George Lucas' LucasArts game publishing unit this week laid off 75 to 100 of its employees, including VP of product development Peter Hirschmann and Shawn Storc, producer of its LEGO-themed "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" titles, Kotaku reported. [more..]

Atlanta - Time Warner is competing with a rival group led by NBC Universal, Blackstone Group and Bain Capital to acquire Atlanta-based Weather Channel from Landmark Communications, according to a report by Reuters on Friday. [more..]

Los Angeles - Despite launching what it calls a "platform agnostic" bandwidth management system this week, broadband and cable TV provider Comcast was served with class-action lawsuits this week in three states over its practice of throttling the BitTorrent file transfers of some of its users, Ars Technica reported. [more..]

Santa Clara, Calif. - Macrovision, a provider of copy-protection technology and informational media databases, announced on Friday that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has sold all of its 19% stake in the company to several existing and new institutional investors.
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New York - After announcing that it had hired Goldman Sachs to help explore a sale of the company in January, restaurant and nightlife guide publisher Zagat announced on Friday that it has discontinued its search for suitors and will instead pursue an "organic growth strategy." [more..]

New York - CBS plans to launch a digital record label in January that will seek to place its artists' music in CBS TV and digital programming, as well as distribute through digital retailers like iTunes, Variety reports. [more..]

New York - IAC, the conglomerate of Internet businesses, has sold its Entertainment Publications Inc. (EPI) subsidiary, a provider of discounts and promotions, to MH Equity Investors for $135 million. [more..]

Reston, Va. - Preparing to launch trials of its new mobile interactive media service later this summer, ICO Global Communications said on Friday that it will raise $23.5 million by selling stock to a small group of institutional investors. [more..]

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New York - TuneCore, a digital music distribution service that provides artists with low-cost distribution through iTunes and other retailers, has announced that it will now offer a $10 flat-rate fee for distribution of songs to seven retailers. [more..]

Philadelphia - Comcast, the nation's largest cable TV provider that also counts 14 million broadband subscribers, said this week that it expects to offer 100 Mbps download speeds to Internet access subscribers in most of its markets by 2010, the Associated Press reported. [more..]

London - The British Phonographic Institute (BPI), a record label trade group, announced on Friday that it has partnered with U.K. broadband provider Virgin Media on a public anti-piracy campaign. [more..]

London - Omnifone announced on Friday that its MusicStation unlimited mobile music download service on Vodafone's network is now the largest digital music subscription service in the U.K., overtaking even PC-centric services in terms of subscriber numbers. [more..]

Los Angeles - Universal Motown recording artist Lil Wayne's new album, "Tha Carter III," will be made available for purchase and download directly from his website, social network pages and other sites using the Musicane widget, the label said. [more..]

San Bruno, Calif. - Google's YouTube on Friday debuted a new channel category for citizen journalists on its site, as "Reporter" became an option alongside other channel tags such as Comedian, Guru, Musician and YouTuber. [more..]

San Francisco - GoFish, an online youth entertainment and media network that draws about 66 million unique visitors a month, on Friday named Matt Freeman as its new CEO. [more..]

San Francisco - Greystripe, a distributor of free, ad-supported mobile games that to date counts 65 million downloads, on Friday released new demographic data on its users that shows mobile games now reach a wider audience than middle-aged women. [more..]

Boston - 2K Sports, the sports publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, announced on Friday that 11-time NBA All-Star and 2008 Defensive Player of the Year Kevin Garnett of the Boston Celtics will be featured as the cover athlete and spokesman for the company's new basketball video game, NBA 2K9. [more..]

Washington - With Barack Obama the presumptive Democratic nominee, Congressional Quarterly has launched the Democratic edition of its CQ Politics' "VP Madness" online game. VP Madness pits a field of 32 potential running mates against one another in an NCAA basketball-style tournament bracket. [more..]

Durham, N.C. - Video game publisher Funcom announced on Friday that its "Age of Conan" massively multiplayer online PC game has now sold a million copies in less than three weeks, topping PC game charts in the U.S., Germany, France and the U.K. [more..]