Washington - The U.S. House Subcommittee on the Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property yesterday approved the Performance Rights Act, which would for the first time compel AM and FM radio stations to pay record labels and musicians royalties to play their songs, on top of the current payments to songwriters and music publishers. [more..]

Portland, Ore. - A federal judge has awarded an Oregon woman $107,834 in attorneys' fees to compensate for her expenses in a file-sharing copyright lawsuit that the record labels eventually dropped. [more..]

Warren, N.J. - Virgin Mobile USA, the wireless telecom services provider, has signed a deal to acquire Helio, a wireless services joint venture between EarthLink and SK Telecom, for about $39 million in Virgin Mobile stock. [more..]

London - A licensed peer-to-peer music file-sharing service is expected to launch in the U.K. by early next year, a market reaction to government pressure and the threat of legislation that would compel Internet service providers and the music industry to collaborate, The Register reported, citing music industry sources. [more..]

Sunnyvale, Calif. - Shares of Yahoo slid slightly% on Friday, a day after the company announced a series of organizational changes aimed at bolstering its business. [more..]

Los Angeles - MySpace founder Brad Greenspan's LiveVideo Network venture this week made a $12.6 million offer for 25% of JumpTV, but the offer was turned down in favor of a previously announced merger agreement between JumpTV and NeuLion, Canada's Globe and Mail reported. [more..]

Santa Clara, Calif. - The Bay Area, combining the three metro areas of San Francisco, San Jose/Silicon Valley and Oakland, had 386,200 high-tech industry workers in 2006, the most of any metro area in the nation, according to AeA's newly released Cybercities 2008 report. [more..]

San Francisco - Independent animation network aniBoom announced on Friday that it has closed a $10 million second round of venture capital financing. [more..]

Vienna, Austria - Xendex, an Austria-based developer of mobile games, announced that it has raised a $3.6 million first round of financing led by Pontis Venture Partners. [more..]

London - Songkick, an online concert recommendation engine, has raised around $1.1 million in a new round of financing, from individual investors including Accelerator Group founding partner Saul Klein, VentureBeat reported. [more..]

Palo Alto, Calif. - Moxsie, an online social network centered on the fashion world, has raised over $1 million in its first round of financing, led by Alloy Ventures, PEHub.com reported, citing a regulatory filing. [more..]

Almost 500 people showed up for what truly has become a "must-attend" event for media, entertainment and technology businesses, investors, and policy-makers involved in the digital distribution of media and entertainment. We'll be back with vlogs, more pictures and editorial coverage of the event shortly. [more..]

Arlington, Va. - PBS.org, the website of PBS, saw a 25% jump in site visits during the 2007-08 television season, compared with the prior year, according to new statistics released by Internet measurement service Hitwise. [more..]

Tokyo - Sony Computer Entertainment this week announced plans to launch its long-awaited movie and TV download service for the PlayStation 3 in the U.S. this summer, although "insiders at numerous studios" told Variety that they have not signed deals to license their content to such a service. [more..]

Seattle - Coffeehouse chain Starbucks has decided to further withdraw from the music business, and will reduce the number of CDs it sells in its stores by removing rotating CD racks in favor of showcasing just four album titles near store cash registers, the Seattle Times reported. [more..]

New York - The National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM), a trade group that includes U.S. brick-and-mortar music retailers, this week issued a statement urging parity in physical and digital album release dates. [more..]

New York - Viacom's MTVN Entertainment Group announced this week the launch of Atom.com, a re-imagined version of its AtomFilms unit as a digital comedy network that will partner with the company's Comedy Central network to distribute original programming across digital platforms. [more..]

Reston, Va. - Americans conducted nearly 7 million Internet searches for the Apple iPhone in April, according to new figures from Reston-based comScore. The influx came as the Silicon Valley company introduced its newest version of the popular device on June 9. [more..]

San Francisco - Online social network Facebook will begin asking members to declare their gender as "male" or "female," in order to fix bugs in both English and other languages that caused grammatical errors in automated messages when the system was forced to improvise for the lack of an official pronoun, Reuters reported. [more..]

San Bruno, Calif. - Google's YouTube has announced the launch of its Partner Program in France and Germany, where the most popular users will now be able to share in the ad revenue the site generates from the videos they post. [more..]

Los Angeles - Web video content producer and syndicator 60Frames Entertainment said this week that it has signed a deal with comic publisher Oni Press, to produce a Web series based on current and forthcoming titles. [more..]