Washington - U.S. Reps. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) and John Doolittle (R-Calif.) have  introduced a new version of their legislation that would enshrine the traditional rights of consumers to "fair use" of copyrighted works into law, which the lawmakers see as eroding in the digital age. [more..]

San Francisco - Sony has affirmed plans to ship 2 million PlayStation 3 video game consoles to North American retailers by the end of March, and expects shipments to have offset early shortages of the consoles in U.S. stores by May, Reuters reported. [more..]

Washington - The Digital Media Association (DiMA), a trade group of webcasters whose members include AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple's iTunes Store, has filed a "friend of the court" brief opposing a claim by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) that digital music downloads should be considered "public performances," and therefore subject to an additional performance license and royalty. [more..]

Los Angeles - The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said on Wednesday that it will begin sending letters to hundreds of university computer users each month, seeking settlements of potential file-sharing copyright lawsuits, the Associated Press reported. [more..]

Los Angeles - Google's YouTube video-sharing site is complying with a request sent Tuesday by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences to remove unauthorized clips of Sunday night's Oscars telecast, Variety reported. [more..]

New York - Motorola has indefinitely delayed the release of its iRadio service, which had been in beta testing for over a year and was touted as the company's mobile radio solution, Billboard.biz reported. [more..]

London - Major record label EMI Music on Wednesday signed an agreement to license its artists' music to online social music network Last.fm's European users. [more..]

New York - Mobile music downloads in Japan last year totaled 344.1 million -- up 33% --  compared with just 23 million PC-based music download sales, Billboard.biz reported, citing data from the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ). [more..]

Arlington, Va. - "Star Wars" director George Lucas has filed a "Notice of Opposition" with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office against news aggregation site Digg.com, which Lucas says is similar to "The Dig," a PC adventure game released in 1995 by his LucasArts games division. [more..]

New York - Microsoft has signed a music publishing deal with Warner Music Group's Warner/Chappell Music, for the rights to license compositions from Microsoft video game titles. [more..]

Venice, Calif. - Vantage Media, a provider of search engine marketing services, announced on Wednesday that it has raised $70 million in its first round of venture capital financing, led by Montgomery & Co. [more..]

Emeryville, Calif. - MobiTV, a provider of mobile and broadband TV and music services, announced on Wednesday that it has surpassed 2 million paying subscribers worldwide, more than doubling its base in under a year. The company offers over 100 channels of live TV and on-demand video for mobile phones worldwide, including 40 in the U.S. "After more than three years of delivering real live television and video on demand services commercially for millions of customers, on almost every type of mobile or broadband network, MobiTV has quickly become the industry's go-to resource for mobile content delivery," said Paul Scanlan, president and co-founder of MobiTV. [more..]

New York - Viacom's Comedy Central on Wednesday announced plans to debut a new half-hour late-night series on March 5 that will feature all original broadband programming from ComedyCentral.com Viacom-owned short film site AtomFilms. Airing at 2:00 a.m., "Web Shows" will feature animation, live-action narratives, topical stand-up performances and sketch comedies originally produced for the Internet, including "Baxter & McGuire," "Golden Age," and Atom's "The Punk Group: Fat Girls on Bicycles." [more..]

Los Angeles - Tila Tequila, a young, female Asian rap artist who counts over 1.6 million friends and half a billion page views on MySpace, has signed a deal with digital label INgrooves and video producer Endemol to offer her debut single and music video as an independent, digital-only global release. The single for "I Love U," produced by Lil' Jon, and music video will packaged together as a 99 cent download made available exclusively on iTunes until March 13. The music video has already been available worldwide through mobile phone carriers since Feb. 14, with Sprint offering the exclusive download in the U.S. [more..]

Reston, Va. - Voxant, an online distributor and promoter of news content from more than 150 sources, said that it has partnered with AP Digital, a commercial division of The Associated Press (AP). Under the deal, a selection of AP news video, articles and photos will be made available to thousands of websites and blogs through Voxant's TheNewsRoom. [more..]

Boston - Gather.com, a provider of social networking and content sharing services, announced on Wednesday that it has received 1,500 manuscript submissions since the Jan. 11 launch of its Gather.com First Chapters Writing Competition. All manuscripts, which must be completed works of commercial fiction, are evaluated by the Gather.com community of readers, writers and aspiring authors. The contest is being produced in conjunction with publisher Simon & Schuster. [more..]

San Francisco - The indie rock band They Might Be Giants has come up with a novel twist on the cell phone ringtone, composing original songs under 30 seconds in length that can be freely downloaded by fans, Wired reported. "We take a little sketch of a lyric or idea and make it as intense as possible," TMBG singer-songwriter John Flansburgh told Wired. "These songs are built for repeated listens." The band even composed several original "snacktones" for Wired readers, available for download from a link below. [more..]

Seattle - Social music discovery service iLike said on Wednesday that it has surpassed 500,000 registered users since launching its offering four months ago. The company provides a sidebar for iTunes that lets users share playlists online, and either purchase songs immediately or save them to a wishlist, as well as a MySpace widget that shows and plays favorite music. It also offers a social network site that features music recommendations, and music videos from YouTube. Seattle-based iLike also announced a new version of its software for Windows Media Player. [more..]

Redwood City, Calif. - Electronic Arts announced on Wednesday that it has partnered with NBC Universal's iVillage women's entertainment company to create a co-branded casual games channel on iVillage.com. The site will feature titles from EA's Pogo.com, which counts 14 million monthly users and will become the exclusive casual games provider for iVillage.com's 16 million members. [more..]