New York - Major label Universal Music Group said on Monday that it has licensed catalog to Dada Entertainment, the operator of a digital and mobile entertainment distribution service. Under the terms, Dada.net will make UMG songs available for purchase and downloads as DRM-free full-track MP3s and ringtones from all major mobile carriers. The company -- a joint venture between Dada USA and major label Sony BMG -- also offers Sony BMG content, and said content from other major and indie labels is on the way.

Leipzig, Germany - Worldwide use of peer-to-peer applications has fallen as a percentage of overall Web traffic, as the total amount of Web traffic has grown, Ars Technica reported, citing preliminary results of a new study from deep-packet inspection firm Ipoque.

Los Angeles - Lawyers representing Westside Productions, owners of the copyrights to Michael Moore's new documentary "Slacker Uprising," have sent a takedown notice seeking to have the film -- which Moore offered for free download to users in the U.S. and Canada -- removed from a BitTorrent file-sharing hub, TorrentFreak reported.

London - Spotify, a Swedish firm developing an ad-supported digital music service that will reportedly stream songs via encrypted peer-to-peer technology, has raised over $21 million in funding from investors including Northzone Venture Partners, TechCrunch UK reported.

Los Angeles - Major record label EMI's Australian unit has launched an MP3 download store in the country called Musichead MP3, Billboard reports. Powered by U.K.-based digital music store 7digital, Musichead launches with a library of over 500,000 tracks, and accepts payments via both credit card and PayPal.

Baltimore - Following months of preparation, wireless carrier Sprint (NYSE: S) on Monday officially launched its high-speed WiMax network, known as Xohm, in Baltimore. It marks the first network in the country to launch using the WiMax mobile broadband technology.

San Francisco - After similar moves were made by Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) and Yahoo (NASD: YHOO), Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) has announced plans to shut down servers that provide continued access for consumers to songs they purchased from its digital music store that were wrapped in digital rights management (DRM) security -- which the company has since abandoned in favor of MP3s.

Los Angeles - The Pirate Bay, the notorious Sweden-based file-sharing tracker site, is now once again legally available in Italy, after the site successfully appealed the ruling last month of an Italian judge, TorrentFreak reported.

Brussels - The European Parliament has voted to prohibit member states from enacting "three-strikes" laws that disconnect the Internet accounts of repeat file-swappers, TorrentFreak reported.

Duluth, Minn. - A federal judge in Minnesota yesterday declared a mistrial in the copyright infringement lawsuit that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) brought against Jammie Thomas, the first American to be found guilty by a federal jury of illegal file-sharing, who was ordered to pay $222,000 the labels in damages. U.S. District Judge Michael Davis said he erred in his initial jury instructions, which stated that Thomas should be found guilty regardless of whether or not it was proven that anyone downloaded the songs offered from her Kazaa account.

London - Cell phone maker Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson on Wednesday introduced PlayNow, an unlimited mobile music service powered by Omnifone that is due to launch with Telenor in Sweden later this year.

Camas, Wash. - Abacast, a provider of real-time streaming media delivery technology, announced that it has acquired Tukati, a provider of peer-assisted on-demand delivery services.

Los Angeles - The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) will let a jury decide the amount of copyright infringement damages an admitted file-swapper must pay, after it rejected a federal judge's suggestion that she pay $200 per song, less than the $750 minimum sought by the record label trade group, Ars Technica reports.

Philadelphia - Comcast (NASD: CMCSA) late last week provided the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will additional information it requested regarding the company's new "protocol agnostic" network management practices, after it was sanctioned by the FCC for targeting the peer-to-peer traffic of some of its 14 million broadband subscribers. The company said its new network management technique "will identify which customer accounts are using the greatest amounts of bandwidth and their Internet traffic will be temporarily managed until the period of congestion passes."

Los Angeles - The four major record labels, along with leading U.S. retailers and memory card maker SanDisk on Monday introduced a new music format, where microSD cards will come pre-loaded with DRM-free MP3 albums from top artists. The "slotMusic" cards will be playable in mobile phones and MP3 players that support microSD cards -- which excludes Apple's (NASD: AAPL) iPod -- as well as on any computer with a USB port and a number of in-car systems.

Tokyo - Japan has made its first arrest of an individual who uploaded a movie to a file-sharing network before its official release, and Kazushi Hirata now faces up to ten years in prison and a fine of up to $96,000 for sharing the movie "Wanted" on Japan's Winny file-sharing network, according to reports.

Madrid - A Spanish court has ruled that a site offering links to download media files on third-party sites does not infringe on copyrights, TorrentFreak reported.

New York - Video game publisher Electronic Arts (NASD: ERTS) has decided to loosen the digital rights management (DRM) restrictions on its new game release, "Spore," after consumers complained the terms were too onerous and a pirated version of the game began to see heavy traffic on file-sharing networks, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Los Angeles - Video game publisher Activision (NASD: ATVI), which recently merged with media conglomerate Vivendi's Blizzard Entertainment, has filed a copyright infringement suit against a New York man alleged to have illegally copied and distributed its game titles, Edge Online reported. It is unclear whether the complaint relates to file-sharing on a peer-to-peer network, but Activision is seeking statutory damages of $30,000 to $150,000 for each alleged infringement made by defendant James R. Strickland.

London - Amazon.com has held a series of talks with U.K. record labels, and plans to launch its MP3 download store in the U.K. next month, New Media Age reports. The store was launched a year ago in the U.S., and currently offers over 5 million songs, from all four major labels and a bevy of independents.