Apple’s Tablet

It wouldn’t be a new year without an Apple rumor to get techies salivating, and 2010 opened with a big one.

The Wall Street Journal reported Jan. 4 that Apple is preparing to introduce a new multimedia tablet device that does everything many people use laptops for, including playing games, surfing the Web, watching videos and reading electronic books and newspapers. The price? Somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,000.

Quoting folks claiming to have been briefed on the subject, the Journal also reported the tablet’s screen will measure 10 to 11 inches and may have two different material finishes. That’s “may have” because it’s not clear whether Apple is testing different finishes or will offer different versions of the device at various prices.

The tablet is also rumored to come with a WiFi connection through a national provider.

Although the tablet device is reportedly not shipping until March, Apple is expected to introduce the product sometime in January.

Like all Apple rumblings before they become Apple facts, a spokesman said the company doesn’t comment on rumors or speculation.

New Trial, Old Case

The Boston University grad student who lost a file-sharing copyright lawsuit has asked a judge to grant him a new hearing or reduce the damages.

Joel Tenenbaum admitted in court last year that he illegally downloaded and distributed 30 major label songs. As a result, last July a federal jury ordered Tenenbaum to pay the labels $675,000.

As one of the last piracy lawsuits resulting from the recording industry’s method of suing individual song swappers, Tenenbaum’s case was one of the few to actually make it through the court system. Most folks chose to settle with the labels and pay a few thousand dollars rather than incur legal expenses and a possible judgment against them.

But Tenenbaum’s case wasn’t exactly a cut-and-dried court experience. His lawyer is Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson, who during the first trial was admonished by the judge for asking potential jurors whether they had smoked marijuana and if they were passionate about anything.

Nesson did score a victory of sorts during the trial’s first week when he convinced the judge to allow him to rearrange the courtroom’s furniture. Nesson contended the traditional arrangement where both plaintiff and defendant’s tables faced the judge was not a good “rhetorical space,” and convinced the judge to let him arrange the furniture so that the defendant’s table faced the jury while the plaintiff’s table remained facing the judge.

But in the end a jury found Tenenbaum guilty of infringing on label copyrights. In December the judge ordered him to destroy any infringing music files he still had in his possession.

Now Tenenbaum is asking for a retrial, arguing the amount of damages is too high and that he was only one of millions who downloaded and shared music. At this time no one knows if Nesson will have another crack at rearranging the courtroom’s furniture.

My Bad

It’s not often that a major business figure accepts responsibility for a blunder. Especially when the mistake is so big it’s destined to be scrutinized in MBA courses for years to come.

But there he was, Gerald Levin, architect of the AOL / Time Warner merger in 2000, appearing on CNBC, the business cable channel that once named him one of the worst American CEOs of all time.

Levin wasn’t alone. AOL founder Steve Case was also on hand to discuss the merger’s 10-year anniversary as well as the aftermath, which included shareholders losing billions of dollars.

Regarding the AOL / Time Warner merger, Levin was surprisingly frank.

“I presided over the worst deal of the century, apparently, and I guess it’s time for those who are involved in companies to stand up and say: you know what, I’m solely responsible for it,” Levin said. “I was the CEO; I was in charge; I’m really very sorry about the pain and suffering and loss that was caused. I take responsibility. It wasn’t the board; it wasn’t my colleagues. It wasn’t the bankers and lawyers at Time Warner.”

Evidently Levin was moved to take responsibility after seeing Wall Street’s 2008 crash dive into red ink.

“Let’s hear publicly from Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, on and on,” Levin said.

Oh, well. Better late than never.

Bono Vs ISPs

Bono isn’t all warm and fuzzy when it comes to Internet providers. The U2 frontman recently penned a New York Times op-ed piece blaming “rich service providers” for recording industry woes.

In case you haven’t guessed, Bono’s recent remarks were about peer-to-peer file sharing. But instead of blaming music lovers for illicitly downloading songs when they should be purchasing the music, he said the time has come for ISPs to track what folks are doing online.

“We’re the post office, they tell us; who knows what’s in the brown-paper bags,” Bono wrote. “But we know from America’s noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China’s ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it’s perfectly possible to track content.”

Bono isn’t the only one in the U2 camp blaming ISPs for the havoc brought upon the industry by file swapping. During a speech at the Midem music convention in Cannes in 2008, U2 manager Paul McGuinness told the audience that ISPs and tech companies have built their businesses upon the backs of record labels.

Along with raging at ISPs, McGuinness named companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Google and AOL as helping to destroy the music industry, even though U2 did an iPod advertisement back in the day when the band’s album How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb was a new release.

“We must shame them into wanting to help us,” McGuinness said. “Their snouts have been at our trough feeding free for too long.”

Other subjects in Bono’s most recent op-ed column included quantum teleportation, soccer’s World Cup and the return of the automobile as a sexual object.