VentureBeat

Here’s the latest action:

Harvard professor attacks music industry law — Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson will attempt to overturn the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999 by arguing that it unconstitutionally allows a private group to carry out civil enforcement of a criminal law by fining alleged music pirates.

SEC charges Mark Cuban with insider trading — Cuban is accused of dumping shares of Mamma.com shortly after learning that the company would raise more money, thus dropping its stock price.

A new kind of supercomputer — A computing pioneer named Steven Wallach has invented a new machine called the Convey Computer that may offer another avenue for high-end computing needs.

Citi axes 53,000 positions — Banks continue their slide, with massive layoffs at Citigroup.

Ultra-wideband firm Wisar lays off 30 — The wireless USB maker, which earlier this year raised $24 million, says its market has developed more slowly than anticipated.

Rupert Murdoch: Newspapers ready for a rebirth — There has been no loss in the business of “delivering accurate news and information in a cheap and timely way,” the media mogul said on an ABC Radio National lecture.

EMC starts Decho, cloud computing outfit — Decho will be a subsidiary of the IT giant, offering online storage for files for business and personal users.

Yellow Pages in their death throes — The business of directories, both offline and on, may be ready to collapse under the strain of recession.

Boom-era CEO sentenced for stock fraud — Way back in 2001, the CEO of a company called PurchasePro fraudulently inflated revenues. He just got nine years in prison.

LocalMatters withdraws its IPO — The new media publishing company gave up on plans for a $57.5 million IPO, citing, what else, market conditions.

Diane Greene was ousted as chief executive of VMware today.

Just a few weeks ago, Greene was beaming with pride when she received a “visionary award” from the SD Forum. Her chief scientist, Mendel Rosenbaum, introduced her as proof positive that you don’t have to be a jerk to be a successful CEO of a multibillion dollar company.

Things can change fast. VMware announced today that Greene has been replaced by former Microsoft executive Paul Maritz as president and CEO. Joe Tucci, CEO of EMC, which owns a big stake in publicly traded VMware, said in a statement that VMware is in a position to extend its lead in virtualization, or the ability to run more than one operating system on the same computer. Virtualization has taken the server world by storm because it enables much more efficient use of a fleet of servers in a data center.

This change is rich with irony. Microsoft just began its frontal assault on VMware with the launch of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, which was in the making for years. Now Microsoft will go head to head with Maritz, a former key architect of Microsoft strategy and the guy made famous in the government antitrust case against Microsoft for saying in an email the company should cut off Netscape’s air supply.

Maritz retired from Microsoft in 2000 and comes to VMware via Pi Corp., a cloud computing start-up which he founded in 2003. EMC bought Pi Corp. in February, and Maritz became head of EMC’s cloud division. There was no hint in the release about why Greene was removed. The company said it expects revenues for 2008 to be modestly below the previous estimates of 50 percent growth over 2007.

It’s never a good sign when a founder leaves a company, particularly when it’s someone like Greene, who did so much to shepherd VMware through its early years, its acquisition by EMC for $600 million in 2004, and then its initial public offering in 2007 that raised billions of dollars. But it’s a turbulent year with a tough economic environment. It’s easy to see how stability at the top can be fragile. Greene lasted for a decade, far longer than most founders do.

Rosenbaum credited Greene with establishing the culture of VMware and recognizing the value of virtualization technology. Greene said that she persevered, even when the company was sold to a big storage firm, and that she was allowed to let VMware grow “unfettered.”

“The last chapter remains to be seen whether we will be allowed to pull off a full spinoff,” she said. “I hope so.”

The stock has tanked 27 percent so far today, down $14.36 a share to $38.79.

Verizon to buy Alltel, your cell phone bill to go up? — Verizon has concluded a deal to buy smaller wireless operator Alltel for $27 billion. Combined, the two will pass AT&T to become the largest operator in the US. Alltel has many users in the Midwest, and it has gotten relatively good marks for things like customer service, that market leaders like Verizon and AT&T are not known for. Analyst Craig Moffett of Sanford C. Bernstein is optimistic about such consolidation driving up prices for consumers. The New York Times quotes him as follows:

The consolidation of Alltel takes another step towards rationalizing and consolidating the U.S. Wireless industry, something that must be viewed as a positive. Fewer players will inevitably mean greater pricing stability (although only marginally so, since the smaller operators increasingly have been in the position of taking their cues from the Big Four anyway), and should lead to marketing efficiencies for all players as competition for retail distribution consolidates.

“Pricing stability,” of course, is a euphemism for less competition, but the deal is expected to pass regulators, and anyway, some consumer-rights groups aren’t worried. For mobile startups, this all means there’s one less wireless operator out there to try to work with. [AP photo via The Boston Globe.]

Valley VC Vinod Khosla to get backing from CalPERS for cleantech investments — The California pension fund is expected to put up to $640 million into Kholsa Ventures, Khosla’s self-titled and self-funded investment vehicle that has focused on cleantech investments. PEHub has details; see also our previous coverage of the Wall Street Journal’s criticism of Khosla’s biofuel investments, and his response.

Microsoft may buy information management software company Zoomix for $20 to $30 million — more here.

HP also getting into cleantech — The storied tech conglomerate has announced an agreement with Xtreme Energetics to develop a solar energy system designed to generate electricity “at twice the efficiency and half the cost of traditional solar panels,” it claims. HP is licensing its transparent transistor technology, which it developed in conjunction with Oregon State University, to Xtreme Energetics in exchange for royalty payments.

Business software company EMC to buy data storage firm Iomega — The move will set EMC off on a new strategy to create a consumer business in data storage, an area that Google and other consumer-facing Internet companies have also been getting into.

The Los Angeles Times launches a tech blog — This means more competition for VentureBeat, which we, of course, welcome. The blog’s staff includes the excellent Jessica Guynn, who was recently hired away from The San Francisco Chronicle.