Beatles demand $15mn for online rights - report

The Beatles are asking $15mn for six months' exclusive rights to sell their catalogue online, according to a News.com report. If true, such a high premium would almost certainly price the world's biggest selling group out of the range of most of the online services. ...more

Analyst backs Apple over iTunes sales figures

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has backed Apple's denial that sales of iTunes downloads have slumped this year. In a note to investors Munster said that from January to September Apple sold 18.5 million tracks per week, an increase of 78 per cent on 2005. ...more

Yahoo! beefs up its Research Labs to match Google and MSN

It is a truth universally accepted that if you are in the search engine business, you need a big research budget. Thus, Yahoo! is expanding the scope of its Yahoo! Research Labs into new areas to reinforce its business strategy: which is to keep up with the Google and Microsoft Research Labs. Yahoo!'s stated aim is to attract the world's most talented scientists and develop Yahoo! Research Labs into a world-class centre for scientific innovation. ...more

Teen listings project provokes fire from Yell

A teenage girl who set up a business listings wiki is being sued by Yell, the company behind the Yellow Pages. Lawyers for the Reading-based company contacted 15-year-old Rosa Blaus, who set up Yellowikis with her father, Paul Youlten, demanding that the site is closed down. Yell's lawyers' letter accused Yellowikis of 'plainly purporting to be associated' with Yell, which 'amounts to a misrepresentation. ...more

Microsoft releases Trojan removal tool

Microsoft has made a removal tool available to get rid of the Trojan downloaded to computers that fall foul of the Download.Ject attack. Previously, the company had published a workaround that meant computers wouldn't fall victim if they accessed a website hosted on an infected server. ...more