MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer will return on Monday, July 6, 2009. Have a wonderful holiday weekend.

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In less than a week since he passed away, Michael Jackson has sold over 2.6 million digital songs. Digital sale of Jackson’s song in the past week shattered the old record, making Jackson the first artist to sell more than a million downloads in a week. Jackson also currently holds twenty-five spots on Billboard’s Hot Digital Songs chart of 74.

Yesterday afternoon the Obama administration unveiled its financial plan for broadband expansion. Companies interested in investing in America’s broadband grid will have until July 14th to apply, however, Verizon, AT&T and Comcast, the nation’s largest telecommunications company’s, have yet to express interest in investing in the venture. While VP Joe Biden noted that “nation can’t compete in the 21st century — without an immediate, high-quality access for everything from streaming video to information overline”, the current plan is expected to roll out low quality DSL speed.

Facebook is set to launch new privacy controls that will let users select “friends” who can and can’t see specific information. For instance, if a user wanted friends to know that he/she is having a party on Friday, but not his/her boss, the new privacy controls would allow for that. Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly noted that Facebook wants “people to be able to share with as narrow or as broad of an audience as they choose.”

In the latest turn in the Pirate Bay saga, Global Gaming Factory X announced that it plans to increase earnings by selling users spare bandwidth back to ISPs. Business Week noted that the company will resell “broadband capacity on an ad hoc basis to Internet service providers—companies like Comcast (CMCSA) or AT&T (T)—that are in need of a quick injection of cheap bandwidth.” Is this a 21st century solution or merely just another problem for the Pirate Bay? Most likely, another problem.

Apple has run into a major obstacle in trying to sell the iPhone in China. While Apple registered the iPhone in China under the hardware and software categories, it did not register the smartphone in the phone category. Unfortunately for Apple. Hanwang Technology Co. trademarked the iPhone in the phone category and Chinese law will not allow the trademark to be immediately purchased by Apple.

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AEG will offer ticket holders for Michael Jackson’s sold-out This Is It tour a full refund. The concert promoter was responsible for the 50 sold out shows Jackson was to perform at London’s O2 Arena. While AEG sold approximately one million tickets, valued at a total of $85, it is giving ticketholders the option of receiving the physical tickets, designed by Jackson, rather than the refund.

The Pirate Bay torrent-sharing network has been acquired by Global Gaming Factory X for $7.8 million. The acquisition comes after the Pirate Bay’s chief officers were ordered to pay a $3.6 million copyright violation. While Global Gaming Factory X noted that it will re-structure the file-sharing sites business plan, the Pirate Bay founders will probably use the buyout money to pay legal fee’s and the RIAA.

The Sony Walkman turns 30 this year. Sony has sold over 385 million Walkman units since its introduction in 1979. It is responsible for introducing and defining the personal music space. However, in the last 8 years, Apple has sold over 210 million iPods, which pretty much tells the story. Sony has some serious reinventing to do.

The Chinese Government have pushed back the starting date of its new web filtering law. Many Chinese tech advocates gathered in Beijing to for what was supposed to be the beginning of a 24-hour Internet boycott, but it turned into a day-long, anti-censorship party. It is unclear when China will adopt the new censorship laws.

Joost, a streaming video service whose name you have probably forgotten, is cutting jobs, killing its consumer products and losing its chief executive. The company will now concentrate on white-label, business-to-business video distribution. The main reason for Joost’s rapid decline has been Hulu, which has all but dominated the full-length, long form streaming content business.

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Comcast has teamed up with Clearwire to offer one of the first 4G wireless data networks. Comcast High-Speed 2go will go live today in Portland and with offerings in Atlanta, Chicago and Philadelphia planned by the end of the year. This system is WiMax-based and features download speeds approaching 4 Mbps, that’s about four times faster than current 3G data networks. When Verizon and AT&T get in the game with their LTE-based 4G networks, this is really going to get interesting.

Amazon is pulling the plug on their associates program in Rhode Island just a week after killing the program in North Carolina. The reason being that Amazon is unhappy about pending sales tax legislation in states. Sources say California may be next.

Julius Genachowski, was sworn in as the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission on Monday. The new FCC will be dominated by Democrats who will focus on empowering consumers and deploying nationwide high-speed Internet access. The FCC regulates telephone and cable companies, oversees radio and television and manages the public airwaves, including wireless data networks.

The Supreme Court has decided not to hear the case between TV studios and Cablevision over networked DVR service. While studios, including Paramount, Disney, NBC and CBS, believed a remote storage DVR would infringe on copyright law, the Supreme Court decided to back a District Court ruling which found that networked DVR did not violate copyright law. The decision is a big win for Cablevision, who will begin launching remote-storage DVR service later this summer.

MSNBC will finally broadcast in high definition. While MSNBC HD debuted yesterday on Cablevision, it will take the network at least two months to get the high definition broadcast to most markets. MSNBC President Phil Griffin noted that “If you want to be competitive in this game, it’s the price of entry.”

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Michael Jackson’s death increased Internet usage by more than 4.2 million worldwide users per minute, in comparison to the normal 2 million visitors a minute. Web usage was so massive that AOL’s AIM messaging service crashed for 40 minutes, the LA Times went down, and TMZ’s traffic was more than 33% higher than its previous record high. The strain put on servers is important to note, as how much can the Internet infrastructure really take.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen took in $201.2 million to top the domestic box office. The summer blockbuster took in an additional $186 million internationally, for a global earning of $387.3 million. In its course, Michael Bay’s Transformers sequel demolished the record for a Wednesday opening, previously held by Spider-Man 2 with $152.4 million.

Microsoft has hired Morgan Staney to explore the sale of Razorfish. Razorfish, the digital ad agency Microsoft acquired when it purchased aQuantive, is currently valued between $600-700 million. Razorfish, which boasted sales of roughly $400 million last year, is the digital agency for companies like Nike, Kraft and Audi, and may come in conflict with Microsoft’s own agency Microsoft Advertising.

Informercial legend Billy Mays died yesterday at home in Florida. News of Mays death, famous for the OxiClean commercial, as well as Discovery Channel’s Pitchmen, spread on Twitter. His son Billy Mays III tweeted at “My dad didn’t wake up this morning.. I’m sure you’ll all hear about it. It hasn’t yet hit me but it’s about to” on Sunday morning.