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Sales figures for the last quarter of 2005 show Sony outselling Sharp and Philips in the LCD TV market. This is obviously good news for Sony, but good news for Samsung too: the new Bravia line is the result of a joint venture between the two companies. The pair have combined to leverage Sony's powerful brand name and Samsung's winning technology. Of course, it was mainly fear of a prolonged patent battle that turned the two into partners, but it seems to be working out well for them.

Continuing in a Digital Millenium vein: hardware giant Samsung is being sued by a collection of big movie studios: 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Time Warner, Walt Disney, and Universal. The movie moguls seem to think they have a shot to gouge a mountain of cash from the Korean giant to 'compensate' them for revenues lost due to copied DVDs played on a Samsung device, that by some train of dubious logic they translate into lost sales.

Despite admitting that ripping your own CDs to your iPod or computer was fair use to the supreme court last year, the RIAA is now claiming that the copyright owner can decide not to let you do so at any time it chooses. The EFF tells the whole story. Nope, we couldn't make this stuff up if we tried.