Justin Timberlake, released by Sony's Jive label, will soon be available in MP3. This big news we found buried in a report that Sony BMG, the last of the four major record labels to hold onto copy-protection software, is finally going to embrace the MP3 format. The inevitable decision has generated a lot of drivel from mainstream publications about how industry titans are dropping DRM, whatever that is, and banding together to overthrow Apple's stringent 99-cents pricing regime. Amazon.com, the copy-protection-free alternative they're embracing, is more flexible on the cost of individual tracks.

AOL has stopped selling videos online and instead is throwing its weight behind Amazon's Unbox download service. AOL, which is shifting from paid downloads to ad-supported video plays, will include Unbox-sold videos in video search results. Amazon.com has not had much success with Unbox and is getting soundly beaten by Apple's iTunes. This deal's unlikely to change that.

Look where baiting Apple fanboys gets you. Yesterday we noted that the top-selling digital music device on Amazon.com was not the iPod but Microsoft's Zune. Commenter deathbychichi made quick work of this assertion.

Amazon.com earnings quadrupled to $80 million as sales rose 41 percent, year over year, in the third quarter to $3.26 billion. Amazon also sold 2.5 million copies of the last Harry Potter book — its most popular new product release ever — but failed to make a profit on it because of free shipping and hefty discounts. And totally messing up our editor's delivery. [AP]

Ram Shriram is No. 271 on the Forbes Billionaires list. He's a veteran of Netscape and Amazon, and an investor in StumbleUpon and Google. He owes his place on the list to the latter, where, as an angel investor, he had more shares than anyone besides the company's founders at the time of its IPO. Now he acts as a "sherpa" to young companies, helping guide them to success. He also participated in financial-planning startup Mint's latest round of financing. Mint CEO Aaron Patzer shares a story about Shriram's investing habits after the jump. If you want this guy as your startup sherpa, take notes.

Allfacebook.com is reporting a rumor that Facebook will take on Apple's dominant iTunes by introducing its own music store. Few details are provided, save that they are actively looking to hire someone to head the project and discussions with studios have been ongoing. Music applications such as iLike are popular on the social network, and digital music is a natural fit with the site's original college-kid demographic. But could Facebook really pull this off? At this point, we don't really know what a Facebook music store would be. We do know, however, what it's not.

Eric Schaeffer, the world's worst man, the man who cannot understand why no woman will marry him, the jerkiest jerk in jerk town, is on his book tour to support his opus, "I Can't Believe I'm Still Single"! Our Special Correspondent For Sexy Midwest Trends report things are going poorly: "I just walked through the Barnes and Noble on the first floor of my office building in Chicago (it's the DePaul University book store) and Eric Schaeffer had just finished reading to a group of about ten people next to the revolving doors. I noticed one large-breasted, blonde gal (very fake looking) and a ton of dudes who looked exactly like him. It looked like a really awkward event." Hey, by the way, have you ever looked at his book's page on Amazon?

Netflix shares up on Amazon takeover talk. [AP]

NICK DOUGLAS — It's springtime for Hitler on the Internet as erupts (okay, continues as usual) in war. Let's run through who's been stomping on whom (MySpace on Photobucket, the rapaciously opinionated blogosphere on Kathy Sierra), and whether any of the aggressors have been brought to justice. (Hint: no.)

Bambi Franciso reportulates that Amazon's Jeff Bezos is considering a personal investment in much-hyped natural-language search engine Powerset. It's been widely reported that Powerset planned to use Amazon computing resources, but this would be an unusual vote of confidence from Bezos. Unless he really is just looking for a new toy.

Valleywag contributor Theo DP shreds BusinessWeek's typically gushy cover story on Amazon and founder Jeff Bezos.

There's a phrase for startup founders who quickly tire of running just one company and want a new toy to play with: serial entrepreneurs. Or even parallel entrepreneurs, who stay at one company while founding another.

I.B.M. take Amazon to court over a software patent which according to Big Blue's Sr. V.P. of Shakedowns and Extortion John E. Kelly III:

While these are both doubtlessly fine books (I'll be reading iWoz and blogging it soon), I'm betting that Wozniak's stories about running a Dial-a-Joke line, building Atari games with Steve Jobs, and handing his friends two-dollar bills...doesn't prepare a reader for Pakistani President Musharraf's memoir about leading a bloodless coup, coming close to assassination, and delicately avoiding nuclear war with India while fighting terrorists with the U.S.

The rich are different. You, for example, probably have to take care of your own property taxes. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, on the other hand, has the President of the Washington State Bar Association - a Partner at Amazon's corporate law firm who chaired the state's Enron-inspired Ethics Committee - handle the taxes on stately Bezos Manor.

• Willie Nelson and friends have been issued misdemeanor citations for posessing about 1.5 pounds of weed and 1/5 of a pound of mushrooms. And this surprises you not in the least. [Billboard]
• Bono tells the fashion crowd to "take your fucking finger food and fuck off." Which at least implies that someone was actually eating. Baby steps. [OAN]
• Did you miss the Brooklyn Book Festival? Aren't you lucky. [Galleycat]
• Cheers to the Times for throwing in a good old spoiler for fans of The Office. [NYT]
• It always helps to have your wife working in your favor on Amazon. [Greatest Living Poet]
• Greenwich Village reaches boiling point; gay teens and cranky old potheads to throwdown before November. [WaPo]
• Robert Hughes would like to thank radical Islamic terrorists for removing that "great ugly scaleless box of a thing" from the New York skyline. [The Australian]

Silicon Valley writers may think they know it all, but this insider from Seattle has the real story on why Microsoft's Windows Vista chief just left early for Amazon.

• YouTube wooed Yahoo's Gideo Yu as CFO in move toward IPO. It's either a news item or a posthumous Seuss book. [Search Engine Journal]

Every week brings a new merger rumor, and just like celebrity couples (Bennifer! TomKat! Vive la diff rance!), every merger needs its portmanteau. So remember the official merger names:

One of Valleywag's eternal would-be contibutors, who tirelessly forwards us his precisely HTML-encoded attacks on Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos, sent this little nugget about the Bezos family's literary lives.