Apple has announced that movies from major film studios are now available for rent or purchase in the iTunes Store in France and Ireland. Purchases start at Γé¼7.99 for older titles, Γé¼9.99 for recent releases and Γé¼13.99 for new releases. Rentals cost either Γé¼2.99 for older titles or Γé¼3.99 for new releases; add Γé¼1 for high definition versions. With this move, France and Ireland join the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to have movies available in iTunes (outside of the United States). The delays in adding additional countries are no doubt due to content license restrictions from the major studios.

If you use the Pandora music-streaming service, you're probably aware that the company had long teetered on the edge of survival. So how did it manage to turn the corner and post its first profitable quarter at the end of 2009? The New York Times runs through Pandora's roller-coaster history, giving much of the credit to the Pandora iPhone app, which brought 35,000 new users per day to the service.

Apple has announced the winner of its iTunes Countdown to 10 Billion Songs. The lucky iTunes shopper is Louie Sulcer of Woodstock, Georgia, whose purchase of Johnny Cash's "Guess Things Happen That Way" has earned him a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card. The winning song may come as a surprise when iTunes's current list of top songs is dominated by recent pop and hip-hop singles, but it just goes to show that the iTunes Store continues to serve a wide spectrum of fans and tastes.

The New York Times reports on Wal-Mart's acquisition of Vudu, a company behind the eponymous online movie service incorporated into many HD televisions and Blu-ray players. While specifics on the deal haven't yet been released, it seems clear that Wal-Mart is attempting to embrace the future of media distribution in a climate of dwindling DVD sales.

Joining networks like NBC, ABC, CBS, and FOX, HBO has dipped its toes into the waters of Web television with its new GO service - sort of. While the other aforementioned networks enable anyone with a computer hooked up to the Internet to access content, HBO's GO will be available only to customers currently signed up for its regular cable service. For those folks, Web access to over 600 hours of premium shows and movies is free; for everyone else, there isn't even an option to pay a fee - at least not yet. It will be interesting to watch how HBO develops this service and its audience in the coming year.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published what it calls a checklist of digital rights for ebooks, designed to provoke thought and discussion about what rights readers should have when purchasing electronic books.

AT&T and Sling Media have worked out a deal where SlingPlayer Mobile app for iPhone will be able to stream content from an individual's SlingPlayer digital video recorder over a 3G network. AT&T also said it has worked out streaming video guidelines for 3G, which other developers will have access to in the second quarter of 2010. The updated version hasn't yet been approved and posted by Apple, but it's unlikely to hit other snags.

The New York Times reports that Amazon has purchased the tiny startup Touchco, which was working on a next-generation touch-screen technology that could be used to create full-color touch-screen displays that would be significantly cheaper than current touch screens. Gee, do you think Amazon may be acknowledging that slow E Ink screens aren't going to be sufficient to compete with the iPad?

The latest revision to the Google Books settlement, an ongoing saga we've written about regularly here on TidBITS, is still opposed by Amazon.com and the Internet Archive, among others. The settlement in this revised version would still anoint Google with court approval as the only party in the United States that can scan and offer for sale copyrighted works that are out of print and for which the publisher isn't known.