New York - The Associated Press (AP) has released a statement saying that it has settled an issue with a blogger whom it had demanded remove several posts that quoted short excerpts from AP stories. [more..]

Los Angeles - After reports of tension in the executive ranks at concert promotion giant Live Nation -- over the company's recent spate of multi-million dollar "360 deals" with artists including Madonna and Jay-Z, the company announced on Friday that chairman Michael Cohl, also CEO of the company's Live Nation Artists division, has stepped down and resigned his seat on the company's board, effective immediately. [more..]

New York - The major players in contentious negotiations over digital music royalties, which pit music publishers, record labels and digital music services against one another, have reached a settlement on two of five major issues, Billboard reported, citing an account from David Israelite, president and CEO of the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA). [more..]

Paris - A proposal was introduced in France's Parliament this week that would implement a "three strikes" law compelling Internet service providers to cancel accounts of subscribers found to repeatedly infringe copyrights, according to published reports. [more..]

New York - Despite speculation to the contrary, Microsoft told the Financial Times on Friday that it won't attempt to make up for its failed bid for Yahoo by pursuing other acquisition targets such as AOL and Facebook. [more..]

London - Left-leaning political news blog Huffington Post plans to expand into local news across the U.S., and is pursuing a third round of venture capital to help fund the initiative, founder Arianna Huffington said at a conference hosted by U.K. newspaper the Guardian. [more..]

Boston - Private equity firm Bain Capital Partners has agreed to pay $441 million to acquire D&M Holdings, a Japanese manufacturer of consumer and commercial audio-visual electronics products under brands including Denon and Marantz. [more..]

New York - The Orchard, a digital distributor of independent music and other media, announced on Friday that it is the winning bidder in a bankruptcy auction to purchase TVT Records, an independent music label founded in 1985. [more..]

Los Angeles - A music blog called Antiquiet created a good deal of noise earlier this week, when it posted what are purported to be "mastered, finished" tracks from the 14-years-in-the-making Guns 'N Roses album "Chinese Democracy." [more..]

San Francisco - Seesmic, a developer of live video webcam communications technology, has raised $6 million in new funding, led by Omidyar Network and Wellington Partners, VentureBeat reported. [more..]

There are a number of great blogs out there using other people's images in creative and somewhat controversial ways. The concept is as simple as it is genious, blogs Jay Baage. [more..]

Los Angeles - Facebook drew more worldwide monthly unique visitors than rival MySpace in May (123.9 million vs. 114.6 million), according to comScore, while MySpace continued to lead in the lucrative U.S. market with 73.7 million monthly unique users, compared with Facebook's 35.6 million. [more..]

New York - Users have reported experiencing problems with Qtrax, the free, legal peer-to-peer music download service that launched with licenses from the major labels this week, according to reports. [more..]

Madrid - Spain-based broadcaster Telecinco, a unit of Italy's Mediaset, has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Google's YouTube, noting that programs the company has the rights to are showing up on YouTube before they are even broadcast in Spain, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported. [more..]

Menlo Park, Calif. - Benchmark Capital, an early-stage technology venture capital firm, has named Facebook executive Matt Cohler as a general partner. [more..]

Beijing - Hurray, a Chinese music management firm, record label and wireless music distributor, announced on Friday the resignation of president, COO and acting CFO Sean Wang. [more..]