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Apple and four other major book publishers are being sued by the US Department of Justice over the pricing of ebooks.The USA accuses Apple and Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Simon and Schuster and Penguin of colluding over the prices of ebooks they sell.

This lawsuit is over the firms’ move to the agency model where publishers rather than sellers set prices.

Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon and Schuster have already settled.

The case will proceed against Apple, Macmillan and Penguin “for conspiring to end ebook retailers’ freedom to compete on price”, the Justice Department said.

“As a result of this alleged conspiracy, we believe that consumers paid millions of dollars more for some of the most popular titles,” Attorney General Eric Holder said.

“To effectuate their conspiracy, the publisher defendants teamed up with defendant Apple, which shared the same goal of restraining retail price competition in the sale of ebooks,” according to papers filed in New York’s Southern District court.

“Apple facilitated the publisher defendants’ collective effort to end retail price competition by coordinating their transition to an agency model across all retailers.”

In addition, the European Commission has also been probing e-book price fixing.

Apple, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Simon and Schuster have now made proposals to settle that probe.

“The European Commission has received proposals of possible commitments from Apple and four international publishers,” said the EU’s competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia.

Electronic books are sold according to a different formula from that governing the sales of physical books.

For most physical books publishers set a wholesale price, often about half the cover price, and then let a retailer decide how much they actually want to charge for the title.

This model was initially adopted for ebooks but has since been changed for what is known as an agency model.

Under this scheme, publishers set the price of a book and the agent selling it gets a 30% cut. The agency model was adopted by publishers largely at the prompting of the late Steve Jobs.

The shift to agency pricing was also seen as a protective measure to head off attempts by Amazon to corner the market in ebooks. It had been aggressively cutting prices to win customers over to its Kindle ebook reader.

Shares of smartphone maker HTC plummeted on the Taiwan Stock Exchange after the company reported a sharp drop in its profits for the first quarter of 2012.Its shares dipped as much as 6.8% to 545 New Taiwan dollars.

The firm said net profit for the first three months of year fell 70% from a year earlier to £95 million (NT$4.46 billion).

The numbers come as the firm faces increasing competition from rivals such as Samsung and Apple.

HTC also reported a 35% drop in revenue for the period. Analysts said the weak results had raised concerns about the impact of increasing competition on the firm’s future growth.

HTC, which used to be a contract electronics manufacturer, started making phones under its own brand just five years ago.

The firm made rapid progress and was one of the early market leaders in the Android sector. It gained valuable share in key markets such as the US, and at one time was the world’s third-largest mobile phone maker.

However, the company failed to hold on to its dominant position and has been losing ground to other Android phone makers, as well as Apple’s iPhone.

The firm is launching a new series of phones, dubbed HTC One, in a bid to regain its market share.

Analysts said that even though the company had suffered a setback, it had a good chance to bounce back.

Art galleries and curators are increasingly using the internet to sell art at affordable prices.Some websites are even letting people rent out works of art for less than the price of a monthly mobile phone bill.

Young artists are hoping that this will help them reach an entirely new audience.

They also rent out original works of art to people to try out on their living room wall before they commit to buying it.

The pictures are delivered with a curator’s description of the piece and a pair of white gloves to minimise damage.

The social networking part of the site encourages potential customers to join the online community and talk to the artists about their work.

This gives the artists a chance to promote their work to a new generation of collectors.

Some galleries are now just using their studio space as a marketing tool to promote their e-business.

DegreeArt is both a physical shop in Bethnal Green and a website, which allows art lovers to buy the works of art students, and those who have recently graduated.

It is co-directed by friends Isobel Beauchamp and Elinor Olisa.

The women realised there was a gap in the market for a company that could promote and sell graduate art work.

Both of them advise students on how to brand themselves post-university and surrounded by a colourful exhibition of pictures of rats and amphibians Ms Beauchamp stresses the importance of online promotion. If you don’t have Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or Flickr then you’re missing a massive trick.

Ms Beauchamp says that artists now have to be business savvy and appeal to buyers with less disposable income.

Samsung Electronics has said it’s profit for the first three months of the year to almost double as its smartphone sales continue to grow.The company said it expects an operating profit £3.2 billion (5.8tn won) for the period.

The success of Samsung’s Galaxy range has seen it become the world’s biggest selling smartphone maker.

Analysts said the firm had benefited from keeping its margins healthy, despite growing competition.

With memory chip prices rising, chips will play a big part in second quarter profits. Expectations for operating profit will reach somewhere between 6.5tn to 7.5tn won.

While Samsung’s phone unit has prospered, other divisions, including memory chip manufacturing, have been going through a tough time.

Prices for memory chips have been falling globally, not least due to oversupply.

Analysts said that natural disasters last year in Japan and Thailand had resulted in a fall in production of various electronics products, which use these chips, resulting in high inventory levels putting pressure on prices.

At the same time, slowing demand from key markets such as the US and Europe hurt chipmakers.

However, analysts said that as the global economy recovers and supply chains in the region get back on track, chip prices were likely to recover, boosting Samsung’s profits further.

While the company is expected to grow further, analysts warned that Samsung will have to overcome potential hurdles on the way.

To begin with, it will have to fend off competition from its biggest rival Apple, they said.

The fear is that increased competition may force Samsung to lower its prices in a bid to attract customers, a move which, if implemented, would impact on its profit.

At the same time, Samsung is also involved in a legal battle with Apple over patents involving technology it uses in its smartphones and tablet PCs.

A big rise in online betting via mobile phones has helped Paddy Power to increase it’s profits with a 16% rise annual rise.The bookmaker, which makes most of its profits in the UK, said pre-tax profits for the year to 31 December 2011 rose to £100.9 million (121.2m euros).

Paddy Power expanded its High Street network, opening 41 outlets in the UK last year to bring its total to 165.

Online revenue increased by 26%, driven by a 225% rise in turnover from betting on mobile phones to £304.7 million.

The company said that 49% of its online sports betting customers used their mobile phone to place bets.

Online betting accounts for 79% of Paddy Power’s profits and the company said it had increased the number of UK online customers by 50% to 710,043.

“Our class leading mobile product, married to the strength of our brand and strong value offering has driven acquisition and retention, leading to 1.1 million active customers online,” said chief executive Patrick Kennedy.

Although the company now has 165 shops in the UK it plans to open another 35 to 40 each year.

Yahoo has filed an intellectual property (IP) lawsuit against Facebook.Yahoo claims the social network has infringed 10 of its patents including systems and methods for advertising on the web. Facebook denies the allegation.

The move comes ahead of Facebook’s planned flotation next month.

Patent litigation has become common between the smartphone makers, but this marks a new front in the battles between technology companies.

A statement from Yahoo suggested the web portal believed it has a strong case.

“Yahoo’s patents relate to cutting edge innovations in online products, including in messaging, news feed generation, social commenting, advertising display, preventing click fraud and privacy controls,” its suit said.

“Facebook’s entire social network model, which allows users to create profiles and connect with, among other things, persons and businesses, is based on Yahoo’s patented social networking technology.

The social network signalled that it believed that Yahoo had not tried hard to settle the matter without involving the courts. It described Yahoo’s action as “puzzling”.

Yahoo recently overhauled its board appointing Scott Thompson as its chief executive in January. The former Paypal executive replaced Carol Bartz who had been ousted in September.

Yahoo’s co-founder, Jerry Yang, also resigned from the board in January. The firm’s chairman and three other board members announced their decision to step down shortly afterwards.

The Wall Street Journal had reported that many Yahoo employees expected fresh job cuts following consecutive quarters of revenue declines.

Mr Thompson’s decision to sue may secure fresh funds or other assets if the courts rule in his favour.

The latest suit was filed in the US district court for the northern district of California.

YouTube and Google could face a huge bill for royalties after it lost a court battle in Germany over music videos.A court in Hamburg ruled that YouTube is responsible for the content that users post to the video sharing site.

It wants the video site to install filters that spot when users try to post music clips whose rights are held by royalty collection group,

The German industry group said in court that YouTube had not done enough to stop copyrighted clips being posted.

YouTube said it took no responsibility for what users did, but responded when told of copyright violations.

Gema’s court case was based on 12 separate music clips posted to the website. The ruling concerns seven of the 12 clips.

If YouTube is forced to pay royalties for all the clips used on the site it will face a huge bill.

Gema represents about 60,000 German song writers and musicians.

If enforced, the ruling could also slow the rate at which video is posted to the site as any music clip would have to be cleared for copyright before being used.

Currently, it is estimated that about 60 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube worldwide every minute.

The court case began in 2010 and came after talks between YouTube and Gema about royalties broke down. In 2009, the stalemate meant that videos from German recording firms were briefly blocked on the site.

Gema has rung up several victories against sites it has claimed are using music without paying royalties.

In 2009, file-sharing site Rapidshare was told to start filtering songs users were uploading following action by Gema. In March, 2012 a second judgement told Rapidshare to be more proactive when hunting down content pirated by users.

Music streaming site Grooveshark pulled out of Germany claiming licencing rates set by Gema made it impossible to run a profitable business in the country.

Microsoft’s profits in the three months to the end of March dropped slightly but the results still beat analysts’ expectations after a surprise rise in sales of its Windows operating system.The world’s largest software firm made a net profit of £3.2 billion ($5.11 billion), compared with £3.3 billion a year earlier.

Sales rose by 6% to £10.875 billion.

Windows sales rose 4% against forecasts of a 4% decline, though sales at its entertainment division, which includes the Xbox console, fell 16%.

Its business division saw revenues increase 9% “reflecting the continued strength of Office 2010″, the company said.

Microsoft shares rose 3% in after-hours trading in New York.

The company also noted that the results for the same quarter a year ago had been boosted by a £288 million tax benefit.

Windows is facing competition from the growth of tablet computers such as Apple’s iPad and mobile devices using Google’s Android system.

However, Microsoft is hitting back with the release of Windows 8, an operating system for PCs and mobile devices.

Earlier this week Microsoft said this next operating system would come in three different types.

For those with Intel-compatible machines, the OS will be available in two versions – Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro.

And for those with devices, largely tablets, powered by ARM-designed chips, there will be a Windows RT version.

CD sales have seen a significant year-on-year drop in the first three months of 2012, according to figures from the BPI and the Official Charts Company.Sales fell 25% from 20.5 million in the first three months of 2011, to 15.3 million this year.

Digital sales continue to rise with almost a third of all albums now being bought digitally.

The organisation represents stores like HMV and online sites such as Amazon.

One idea being suggested is a system whereby the music transfers automatically to your MP3 player, tablet or computer as soon as the CD is scanned at the till.

The latest figures come from the BPI, which represents the music industry, and the Official Charts Company.

They show that digital now accounts for 33.1% of all UK albums sales, up from 23.6% in the first three months of 2011.

Singles are doing well too with 46.7 million being sold this year so far, an increase of 4.4% on last year.

Adele’s album remains the year’s best selling album this year with sales of 21 now exceeding four million in the UK.

At the general election David Cameron promised to roll back the centralist nanny sate that labour created over their 13 years of misrule.Instead last week he unveiled a set of proposals for snooping on not just your emails, social media accounts and your website browsing- but also your mobile phoning as well.

An extension of snooping that is currently outlawed by even the eurocrats.

When the Labour government mooted a similar idea the greater controversy hinged on the giant database it planned to create.

It may be proposed this time is that GCHQ has access to the data centres that ISPs already use.

ISPs are already required to keep data logs for 12 months under a 2009 EU directive.

Extending this responsibility to firms such as Facebook would not be a huge change or particularly onerous because it keeps everything anyway.

Facebook has declined to comment on current government proposals, saying it would rather wait until there was more detail of exactly what it wants to do.

But it has made no secret a security feature launched last year which allows all Facebook communications to be carried over a secure connection known as HTTPS, which could render government snooping plans useless.

The tool basically encrypts data. Currently it is an option that people have to sign up to but the firm hopes eventually to make it default.

However the biggest stumbling block is likely to be the cost.

When labour considered greater surveillance powers the Home Office estimated it would cost around £2 billion.

Even without a huge data centre costs are likely to run into millions, and in such cash-strapped times it may mean the idea is put to bed for another few years.

2010′s annual report from the UK’s interception of communications commissioner, published last June, revealed that the UK’s police, intelligence agencies and other public authorities submitted 552,550 requests for information about users’ data over the year.

Furthermore it noted that requests had risen by a rate of about 5% year-on-year since 2008.

Two thirds of the queries related to information about subscribers, which could be used to identify who owned a particular mobile phone.

But officials could also ask for a user’s incoming and outgoing call data, web activity logs and the contents of emails, faxes and web pages visited if the information was deemed to be in the interests of national security.

If ISPs do not already store the information, they can be forced to secretly fit surveillance equipment in specific cases.

A new law could extend officials’ reach further, but users should be under no illusion that much of their data use is already potentially available to prying eyes.