U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein dismissed Yoko Ono's (the former Beatle wife you wish would go away) lawsuit claiming that anti-evolution "documentary" Expelled played a 15-second clip of John Lennon's song Imagine without her permission.

The judge ruled that, were the case to go to trial, it would likely be found that the excerpt from the song fell within fair-use guidelines.

The defendants were Premise Media Corp. of Dallas, Rampant Films of Sherman Oaks, Calif., and Rocky Mountain Pictures Inc. of Salt Lake City, and the film is narrated by Ben Stein, who is intelligent in some areas (business) and less intelligent in others.

Following the solo catalogs of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and Ringo Starr, George Harrison has joined the digital market this week.

Despite being the last solo Beatle catalog to be made available, Harrison's catalog is the most recent to be upgraded and remastered for physical release, and those editions are the versions now available in digital stores. While that is no surprise, what it means is that there are two albums actually missing from the new digital catalog: 1974s Dark Horse and 1975s Extra Texture (Read All About It). It seems apparent from remarks by Harrison's widow, Olivia, that the remastering work will not cease because of this move.

All that remains now is for The Beatles catalog to be made available, but that is still rumored for some time in the new year. With that addition, quite a body of work will be available for fans and listeners digitally, even if the solo catalogs are not true successors to the group's catalog. It is unfortunate that the solo catalog's would be made available before the group catalog, especially for new fans that have no guide to understand how the music of the solo catalog's follows and makes distance from the output of The Beatles. Some might see that as a positive in light of views that The Beatles were a John or a Paul show, but that is what it is.

The reality of the situation is that The Beatles managing company Apple Corps Ltd. was in dispute with Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) for so long, pushing off other projects like remastering (which now seems to coincide with the pending digital release). The Apple vs. Apple case ended in April 2006 in favor of the iPod makers. Apple is reportedly one of the major companies in talks with The Beatles representatives to get the band into stores like iTunes.

A number of Beatle John Lennon's solo albums went up for sale on Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) iTunes Store today, including exclusive video content on a number of the singer's post-Beatles albums reports NME.com. The Lennon catalog joins Paul McCartney's as the only two EMI-based Beatles-related catalogs for sale on the giant music store. Fellow Beatle Ringo Starr's solo EMI catalog will join those two, in addition to his own post-EMI catalog, later this month.

The inclusion of Lennon's solo catalog comes barely two months after the Instant Karma: Save Darfur album featuring covers of Lennon solo tracks debuted at number nine in the Billboard charts. Lennon's catalog includes all of the recent Yoko Ono supervised remastering work that has been made on several albums since 2000, including the singer's landmark Imagine album. The tracks are available as part of the iTunes Plus service, where all EMI-based tracks are free of Digital Rights Management technology.

Billboard.biz is heralding the addition of this catalog as the resumption of speculation about when The Beatles catalog will be made available online, something that has been rumored in the works as a serious notion since at least January of this year. As far as speculation goes, the addition of one more solo Beatle catalog clearly makes the argument for a soon to be released Beatle catalog online stronger. As reported so often, a date is not available, but it still seems safe to presume that 2008 is the earliest any release could occur.

Today marks the 50th anniversary (July 6, 1957) of Paul McCartney meeting John Lennon in a church fete (fair) in Liverpool to form the core partnership that would become The Beatles. In 2007, there has been no "official" Beatles release or related material, but the world still looks on and music fans still buy up products by and related to the four members. Last month, Paul McCartney's 21st solo album Memory Almost Full debuted at #3 in the Billboard 200, while the collected works of the George Harrison supergroup Traveling Wilburys debuted at #9. Meanwhile, the John Lennon-fueled, various contemporary artists-filled Instant Karma compilation designed to aid Darfur debuted at #15.

While these numbers may be impressive for the products of the former Beatles more than 37 years after the band broke up, the music industry slowly and loudly falls apart in self-defeating decline. Luckily, we do not (and frankly cannot) look to The Beatles to save the industry. It's likely the band could not anyhow, despite the potential sales the digital catalog that may one day see light of day might pull in. With the uncertainty of that release on the horizon, all that is left now is the current state of the music industry, but it is not unlike the music industry that The Beatles entered. True, the early 1960s were not a state of decline, but when The Beatles started, the emphasis was not on albums. It was on singles. Is there any difference in the digital tracks that see higher downloads than albums? There might be, but fundamentally there is not.

If The Beatles catalog is ever released it will likely sell the same way many albums today sell. Yes, fans will buy the newest remastered versions from digital stores and relish in the joy of buying a Beatles album in a new way for the first time (akin to 1987's CD versions?), but new listeners (and maybe even some fans) will buy up their favorite tracks, destroying the core albums in the same way that albums are not bought today. Everyone says the album is dying, but in the industry it may never have been meant to be.