According to several sources close to the situation, barring any unforeseen delay, a deal to settle the Skype imbroglio is likely to be announced around the time the markets open tomorrow.

While the massive agreement–which will settle a series of lawsuits waged by Skype’s co-founders–is not yet officially signed, sources said lawyers are apparently putting the finishing touches on the paperwork.

Sources also said that those co-founders–Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis–will get 10 percent of Skype back for rights to key technology they control, an option to pay $83 million for another three percent of the Internet telephony service and two seats on the 23-member board.

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The legal high jinks in the contentious battle over the fate of Skype got worse this afternoon, as former Joost CEO Michelangelo Volpi and Index Ventures filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the founders of Skype–Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, via Joost and Joltid–against them.

It’s yet another chess move among a group of well-known tech players, who used to work together closely and are now at odds.

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In the ongoing fight between Redbox–which rents DVDs from kiosks for $1–and major Hollywood studios, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment just filed a brief to dismiss Redbox’s lawsuit against it.

The fascinating legal battle between Redbox and the studios centers around the issues of steep discounting, windowing and the price for premium content.

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Yesterday, BoomTown checked in with Docstoc CEO Jason Nazar about the document sharing start-up.

Today, it’s Trip Adler, CEO of its much larger rival, Scribd.

Launched in early 2007, the San Francisco-based online publishing company allows customers to share a wider range of documents, including books and manuscripts. It now claims to have 10 million documents.

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Is it just me or is it completely ironic that a pair of European entrepreneurs kept out of the United States due to tantrum lawsuits from the music industry are stamping their own legal feet like two ill-tempered toddlers of late?

That would be Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, who today filed yet another lawsuit in their seemingly never-ending quest to win in court what they couldn’t in business dealmaking.

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Yesterday, in response to Associated Press board Chairman and MediaNews Group CEO Dean Singleton’s diatribe against those who shoplift news and his pledge to “protect news content from misappropriation,” Google posted a response on its public policy blog. Of course, that has nothing to do with the fact that most people think the Singleton speech was aimed at the search giant and its burgeoning power over the distribution of media, although Google was not named by him. Still, it’s always nice to make nice. Sort of.

So, it was hard to resist translating this Google blog by one of its lawyers.

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Under cover of darkness last night, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on the social-networking site’s blog that it would “return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.”

Oh, this is just too good to resist. Therefore, BoomTown shall not tarry in our ongoing job of busting the chops of the young Facebook leader, whose minions have actually–and I am not joking here–given him the nickname: The Wizard.

Well, the Wizard obviously had to pull back the curtain last night and show some serious mea culpa to the people, before they got out the pitchforks.

Here’s a translation of Zuckerberg’s message.

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Late tonight, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a blog entry, saying the popular social-networking site would “return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.”

Facebook has been embroiled in a controversy this week about its Terms of Service–essentially, a Web site’s rules that users must abide by while using its online service–after changes gave it more sweeping rights over customers’ content and privacy.

Now, in full backtrack mode, Zuckerberg said a new “Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” was on the way and asked for user input.

Viva La Revolución! I vote for no more SuperPoking!

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When he debuted his company’s new DVD copier at DEMOfall recently, called RealDVD, RealNetworks’ Rob Glaser did a video interview with BoomTown about it.

And now that RealNetworks and Hollywood are cross-suing each other over RealDVD–in the latest clash over the still-contentious copyright issue that separates the tech and entertainment industries–it’s time for a replay!

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Sorry for the delay, but we’ll finally start posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May in their entirety.

Kicking off the proceedings will be what most of the attendees at the conference told us they considered their favorite interview, which Walt Mossberg and I did with News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch.

Here’s Part 3 of 6 of the Murdoch interview.

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BoomTown was the first to put up the hugely popular spoof video called “Here Comes Another Bubble,” by the San Francisco-based Richter Scales.
And, the first to report on the controversial story of it then being taken down by YouTube (GOOG), in a fight the group had with a local photographer, Lane Hartwell, who objected to [...]

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Have you ever wanted to save that dumb dog-skateboarding video airing on YouTube to your own computer? That’s the premise and promise of RealPlayer 11, which RealNetworks founder Rob Glaser demoed onstage.
Using the software, you can download online videos from Web sites with one click, organize them and burn them to DVD and CD. [...]

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While they might seem a tad laid back in this video, the founders of YouTube–Chad Hurley and Steve Chen–are definitely on the hot seat for sure this year.
While it is always nice to get a $1.6 billion payout for a company started only recently, as the explosive online video service did from Google, the future [...]

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I will admit it–I thought Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman would go over like a lead balloon with the D5 audience, given the media giant had just sued Google–the digital arena’s biggest power of late–for $1 billion for alleged copyright violations at its YouTube subsidiary.
While not everyone in the tech space is cheering for the search [...]

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One billion dollars!
That’s what Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman has asked for in the media giant’s legal war over copyright infringement with search behemoth Google.
So leave it to those clever minxes at Google to turn the whole thing into a new version of “Austin Powers,” casting Dauman as Dr. Evil and his son of the [...]

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