Mediagazer: Spanish court overturns web-blocks, as Pirate Bay says userbase has doubled since blockades began (Chris Cooke/Complete Music Update)

9:25 AM ET, July 18, 2014

Top News:

Jack Shafer / Reuters:

Streaming media services such as Netflix make a Fox-Time Warner deal as bad a bet as '90s newspaper buys — Dear Mr. Murdoch: Save yourself 80 billion bucks — The first time Rupert Murdoch tried to acquire Warner, Ronald Reagan was completing his first term as president …

Discussion: @mccarthyryanj

New York Times:

Fox Challenges ESPN with Pursuit of Time Warner — Rupert Murdoch loves nothing more than taking on an entrenched powerhouse, and with his audacious $80 billion bid to purchase Time Warner, he showed a willingness to go up against one of the industry's most powerful players — ESPN.

Discussion: New York Post and Wall Street Journal

Yoree Koh / Wall Street Journal:

Twitter expected to unveil new metrics that count people who see tweets in embeds and on TV — Under Pressure, Twitter Tries to Resize Itself — Company Is Expected to Unveil New Metrics That Will Show Breadth of Its Audience — After a troubling start as a public company …

Discussion: Business Insider

William Turvill / Press Gazette:

Russia Today London correspondent resigns in protest at ‘disrespect for facts’ over Malaysian plane crash — A Russia Today reporter based in London has resigned with immediate effect in protest at the station's coverage of yesterday's plane crash in Ukraine.

Discussion: @johnprescott

Amazon.com:

Introducing Kindle Unlimited: Unlimited Reading and Listening on Any Device—Just $9.99 a Month — Read freely from over 600,000 books—available on Kindle devices, as well as free Kindle reading apps for iOS, Android and more — Listen to thousands of audiobooks from Audible …

Discussion: TechCrunch, Gigaom, Wall Street Journal, ABC News, PC Pro, @willentrekin, Re/code, @laurahazardowen, @laurahazardowen, NBC News, The Next Web, Engadget and TechCrunch

Stuart Dredge / Guardian:

Nokia MixRadio spins out of Microsoft as standalone streaming music service — Personal radio app will still be preloaded on Windows Phones, but now has scope to launch on iOS and Android too — As an independent entity, Nokia's MixRadio may now spread beyond Windows Phone.

Discussion: Music Ally, Music Week, The Next Web, WinBeta, TIME and hypebot

Agence France-Presse:

Ethiopian bloggers, journalists charged with ‘terrorism’ — Addis Ababa (AFP) - A group of Ethiopian bloggers and journalists detained for nearly three months have been charged with terrorism for having links to an outlawed group and for planning attacks, a judge said Friday.

Discussion: @markc_anderson, ABC News, Committee to Protect … and The Raw Story

Chris Cooke / Complete Music Update:

Spanish court overturns web-blocks, as Pirate Bay says userbase has doubled since blockades began — While Spain was one of the first countries to seriously consider web-blocking as a tactic in the fight against internet piracy with its so called Sinde Law, a court in the country has overturned …

Discussion: TorrentFreak, TorrentFreak, Billboard, GamePolitics blogs, Wired.co.uk and Music Week

Roberto Baldwin / The Next Web:

Microsoft confirms it's closing Xbox Entertainment Studios and halting production of new original TV shows — Today has been a tough one for Microsoft. After announcing 18,000 layoffs, it has also confirmed that it is shutting down its original programming studio, Xbox Entertainment Studios in the coming months.

Discussion: Re/code, Variety, Adweek, AdAge, The Wrap, Multichannel News and @adamostrow

Mike Shields / Wall Street Journal:
After Shutting Down Xbox Studios, Microsoft Faces Trust Issues With Advertisers

Discussion: VideoNuze Analysis and Forbes

Glenn Greenwald / The Intercept:

NBC News Pulls Veteran Reporter from Gaza After Witnessing Israeli Attack on Children — Ayman Mohyeldin, the NBC News correspondent who personally witnessed yesterday's killing by Israel of four Palestinian boys on a Gazan beach and who has received widespread praise for his brave …

Reuters:

BSkyB in talks to acquire 21st Century Fox's Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia for estimated €10B — BSkyB prepares to roll the dice again with European expansion — * BSkyB in talks to buy Fox's German and Italian units — * Italian business hit by macro economic pressure

Alexis C. Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:

How to Teach Google What a Story Is — Google wanted to solve a problem we can all understand. People take so, so many photographs and yet they actually do very little with them. A chosen few are posted to Instagram. Most sit in vast wastelands of thumbnails on phones or in iPhoto never …