Publishing house Ziff Davis Media announced today that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy due to mounting debt that now totals between $500 million and $1 billion.

Ziff Davis is the publisher of such well-known gaming standards as 1UP.com, Electronic Gaming Monthly, Games for Windows, and PC Magazine.

If approved by the court, the company will be tasked with restructuring its finances. An ad hoc noteholder group is planning to pay up to $24.5 million to keep Ziff Davis afloat during the Chapter 11 case.

CNET is reporting that Napster has filed for bankruptcy protection. This is not surprising considering as bankruptcy filing was part of the deal where the German media giant Bertelsmann will purchase the assets of the company for $8 million. Napster has been offline since July of last year, and was unable to work out a deal with the record companies to get the file sharing service back up.

A judge has cleared the way for Excite@Home to shut down its Internet service, according to MSNBC (thanks SatansFist). In fact @Home could end its service as soon as late tonight which might affect some 4 million people. Of course, cable companies which use @Home's network and have not found a replacement network yet, are appealing the decision.

Bankruptcy Judge Thomas Carlson said Redwood City-based ExciteAtHome could reject its existing contracts with the cable companies as early as 3 a.m. EST Saturday, when their contracts expire. Carlson gave ExciteAtHome the leeway to end the contracts after concluding they had become “clearly burdensome” to the company. Under the contracts, ExciteAtHome executives said the company was losing up to $6 million per week.

This news story on CNet paints a somewhat different picture about the situation, and makes it appear less likely that service will actually be shut off.

Yahoo is carrying this Reuters story which reports that the bankrupt Excite@Home could possibly cease providing its cable internet service in 3 days, if it can't get into new contracts with the cable companies that carry the internet service. This depends on a judge, which representatives of Excite@Home will face this Thursday. Thanks GoofyBoy

Representatives of Redwood City, California-based Excite@Home will appear in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Francisco on Thursday, where a judge will decide whether to have the service blocked if current negotiations fail, said spokeswoman Stephanie Xavier.

``It depends on the decision of the judge,'' she said. ``All I can say is we're in active negotiations with the cable companies. We're doing all that we can to maintain service.''

Xavier said many of the cable companies that carry Excite@Home have informed users that their service could cease after Nov. 30.

update by Steve: d-mAn sent along this email that @Home customers in Dallas have gotten.

What was expected for a while now, has happened. Excite@Home has filed for bankrupcty. It's also selling its network to AT&T (which was already a majority owner) for $307 million. Most likely customers should not have any interruption in service.

"This filing is a tool to protect the value of the broadband business for the benefit of the company's financial stakeholders and will help reassure our customers that service will continue uninterrupted through the restructuring process," Patti Hart, Excite@Home chairman and chief executive, said in a statement. "AT&T's offer reflects the value in our network, services, customer base and skilled employees."

In related news, AT&T and Comcast have signed a confidentiality agreement which creates possibilities for further discussion on Comcast's $37.8 billion bid on AT&T Broadband. AT&T isn't really convinced yet at this point that $37.8 billion is enough but there are no companies coming up with any better offers.

What seems to be a disturbing trend lately around these parts has happened again... LinuxGames sends word that Loki Software has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (PDF). Since a few people seem to be confused with what this means, here is word from the president of the company.

People should not confuse this with a Chapter 7 liquidation, where you close the doors and sell off the assets. That is not what we have done. We filed a Chapter 11 reorganization. This will allows us to deal with our creditors fairly and equitably and at the same time continue to operate the company. We are still shipping products and porting new games and expect to be doing so for a long, long time.

LinuxGames also has a retrospective written about the company.

Another DSL provider in big trouble, Covad this time according to this Yahoo story. The company will file for bankruptcy protection by mid-August, and is talking with bondholders to get rid of a $1.4 billion debt. Thanks Chunks. The company will try to restructure in order to return to a positive cash flow. Covad follows Rhythms, Northpoint and other high speed internet providers that either went out of business or are under bankruptcy protection. Covad already had its fair share of problems (story)

Upon restructuring, Covad said it expects to pay out $283.3 million to bondholders. After the payout, Covad said it will have about $250 million of cash on a pro forma basis as of June 30, 2001, enough to run its business into early 2002. It said it expects to emerge from bankruptcy by January 2002.

Doh! it looks like the guys at Scour are really feeling the heat on all of those lawsuits being flung at them by the music industry. They have just filed for Chapter11 bankruptcy. (and more details) Basically to fend off the lawsuits. When you file for Chapter11 pending lawsuits are put on hold. Scour gave the axe to something like 50 employees not to long ago as well.

Filing for Chapter 11 protection, too, allows it to continue its evaluating ``various strategic business alliances and alternatives,'' Scour said. [...] During the bankruptcy process, all of Scour's products, including Scour Exchange which is the swap service, will continue to be available