Amazon has officially cut the ribbon on its library lending program for Kindle. If you live near one of the more than 11,000 participating local libraries and have a library card, you can check out eBooks from your Kindle or Kindle app similar to the way you borrow dead tree equivalents, only you don't need to leave your couch.
While book publishers have been, for the most part, friendly to the idea of e-books – at least since the rise of the Kindle and its ilk – the shift from dead trees to lively pixels still scare many in the industry. Meanwhile, on the TV and movie front, streaming providers like Hulu Plus have been bucking heads with traditional content producers who are fearful of devaluing their content. A new report says Amazon’s looking to take all those anxieties and mix them up in one big worry stew by introducing a Netflix-like subscription e-book service to Amazon Prime accounts.
Enemies yesterday, friends today. That about sums up the relationship between online eCommerce giant Amazon and the state of California, two sides that have been bickering over sales tax. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, Amazon and California legislatures took off the boxing gloves long enough to shake hands and sign a deal where Amazon would be off the hook for sales tax for one more year.
The Amazon tablet is becoming the white whale of tablets, but a report from TechCrunch may have finally shed some light on Amazon’s plans. MG Sigler claims to have used an Amazon tablet, and confirms that it is a 7-inch device running Android. However, it is totally forked version of the platform that bears little resemblance to Google’s current software.
Both EMI and MP3tunes are claiming victory in a court case brought on by the former against the latter over claims that MP3tunes ran afoul of copyright law by failing to remove illegally obtained songs from its storage lockers. A federal judge in New York partially agreed with EMI and found MP3tunes liable for infringing on roughly 350 songs, which is 99 percent less than EMI claimed the service was responsible for, but there's another reason why MP3tunes came out ahead.
It's no secret Hulu's owners want to sell the video streaming service, but what isn't isn't yet know is who will buy it and how much Hulu will fetch. Hulu set a deadline for Wednesday for suitors to submit their initial bids, and this could turn out to be a multi-billion dollar deal, according to The Wall Street Journal.
There are certain risks involved with living in the cloud, with at least one of those being weather related. Underscoring this point, a lighting strike in Dublin over the weekend led to a power failure that knocked out data centers for Amazon and Microsoft, bringing the two companies' cloud services offline, ComputerWorld reports
It will be up to California residents to decide whether or not Amazon and other online retailers will have to collect sales tax in their state. According to the Associated Press, the California Attorney General's Office approved Amazon's petition for a referendum that will give voters the chance to overturn a new controversial law that altered what it means to have a physical presence in the state.
Every time a state draws up a new bill to force Amazon's hand at ponying up sales tax for products sold and shipped to its residents, the online retailer responds by killing off its associate program in that state and ending any business deals. It's akin to Amazon taking it's ball and going home, or at least going elsewhere, the only problem with that approach is Amazon is running out of places to, well, run. California is the most 
It looks like Amazon won’t have to change up all their branding at this time. A federal judge in Oakland, California has ruled that Apple cannot force Amazon to stop using “Appstore” as the name of its ‒ well, app store. According to the decision, Apple failed to show a “likelihood of confusion” would result from Amazon’s use of the term. This case isn’t over, but things are looking more grim for Apple.
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