The Wall Street Journal is reporting that 20th Century Fox has finalized a deal with Apple Inc. that will allow iTunes users to download feature films online. Reportedly, users will download movies and other Fox video content from the iTunes site, and will be allowed to keep the movies for a specified amount of time.

Although the time users may keep a film or other video has not been revealed, analysts suspect it will be one to two weeks at the most. As part of the deal, Fox will use the so-called FairPlay digital rights management service on its downloadable films. This would allow users to the burn a DVD of the films using iTunes, within the usual digital rights management restrictions, of course.

While there have been many rumors over the past year about Apple moving into the movie rental market, the company’s per-song pricing structure, which has worked well for music, did not seem adequate for video rentals.

The partnership with Fox will also have interesting repercussions for Apple TV, Apple’s all but forgotten video Internet service. The fact is, Apple has been so busy redesigning its line of iPods and iPhone’s that it’s downloadable film and video content department has been left behind somewhat this year.

The new deal with 20th Century Fox could bring Apple video and Apple TV back to the forefront in the company’s marketing efforts. The ability of users to download feature-length films, and transfer them to their iPod or iPhone provides huge marketing potential for Apple; and the new partnership with Fox should enable the company to finally get their share of the video market.

Although Apple CEO Steve Jobs has spoken out many times against the Fair-Play digital rights management technology, it would seem that he has finally come to accept DRM as a fact of life in the online media business. The fact that Fox will use Fair-Play digital rights management on its downloadable iTunes films suggests that Apple has resigned itself to continue using some type of digital rights management.

Ironically enough, Apple’s biggest competition in the downloadable music arena is quickly becoming Amazon.com, whose downloadable music service uses no digital rights management technology at all, preferring to provide high-resolution standard MP3’s that can be played or exchanged without restriction.

And with many experts predicting that Amazon.com will quickly catch up with iTunes on the music front, it could be possible that Apple is turning to film and video in an attempt to dominate the market before other big players get seriously involved.

Either way, the Apple/Fox deal puts iTunes one step closer to being an online video rental service, even if Amazon.com appears set to dominate the downloadable music business in the near future.

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Considering that the sales of CDs has been declining for some time now, it’s not really a surprise that bands, agents and record labels are looking to recoup some lost income anyway they can. But surprisingly, music acts are now seeking a piece of the action from an unlikely source: scalpers.

British bands, Radiohead and The Verve have joined a coalition of nearly 500 other acts known as the “Resale Rights Society.” The society is basically a British music industry “Union” of sorts that is seeking a requirement that fees be paid from the “secondary sale” of tickets; in other words, scalping. The fees collected by the society would be used to compensate bands, booking agents, managers and promoters.

Rather than trying to criminalize the activity of tickets scalping, the new society is seeking to return a share of the profits to the music industry, according to wired.com. Resale Rights Society chairman Mark Margo said, “It is unacceptable that not a penny of the estimated 200,000,000 pounds in annual transactions generated by the resale of concert tickets in the UK is returned to the investors in the live music industry.”

In the U. S., ticket scalping is widely practiced, though a few US states have outlawed the activity, and others have limited the extent to which scalpers can profit from the sale of concert and other event tickets. In addition, web sites such as eBay have routinely allowed scalpers to sell tickets at any price they like.

And although music fans often see scalping as an unfair practice, many concertgoers recognize that buying tickets from a “secondary sale” vendor is often the easiest way to get good seats at sold out concerts.

If the Resale Rights Society succeeds in the UK, you can expect to see a similar union coming together in the US to profit from the sale of scalper’s tickets, though a US version of the society may face considerable difficulty in getting their piece of the pie.

The problem is that, in the US the trend over the past decade has been toward rolling back anti-scalping laws. But there is some hope for the U. S. concert promotion industry: an event ticket is essentially a contract, and assuming that contract contains the right terms, an industry group such as the Resale Rights Society could have a legal say in how ticket is resold.

But other industry experts argue that paying a royalty on the reselling of a ticket makes no legal or ethical sense whatsoever. Eric Baker, founder of Viagogo, said in an interview with Reuters, “If I have a Harry Potter book to resell, do I pay JK Rowling twice?”

Who knows how this latest music industry litigation will end up, but one thing is for certain: the lawyers are sure to make a lot of money out of the controversy.

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