Granddad settles & other music news

It's a case people have been watching: that of a Wisconsin man, who was sued for $600,000 by the film industry because his 12-year-old grandson downloaded four movies via a P2P network. Fred Lawrence said he knew nothing about file-sharing at the time his grandson did the downloading, and they owned three of the movies anyway. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that Mr. Lawrence will be giving talks to schoolchildren about Internet piracy as a part of the settlement with the Motion Picture Association of America (here's earlier coverage). Meanwhile, the music industry has just sued 751 more music file-sharers, CNET reports.

There have been lots of digital-music developments lately…. Playing a bit of catchup, Google is beefing up music searching, providing "more information about artists, album cover art, reviews, and links to stores where users can download a track or buy a CD," Red Herring reports. MTV and Microsoft are teaming up, with the former announcing its plan "to launch its long-anticipated Internet service, called URGE," the Los Angeles Times reports . MTV wants to "exploit the flexibility and ubiquity of Microsoft's Media Player software, which comes preinstalled in the Windows operating system." There's now an alternative to the video iPod: the Creative Zen Vision:M. Here are Engadget and The Register on it.