Back Alley: banding, in a general sense, is, as already mentioned, any digital artifacting that reveals the underlying bands, or rows, or columns, of pixels on a digital sensor. As opposed to the random speckle artifacts one gets from noise or grain.
There have been several instances of banding issues with new cameras, each slightly different in form and (as it turned out) often with different causes.
The 1Ds - as already demonstrated. Also the Nikon D200 (cause was some kind of readout imbalance between alternating rows of pixels). Also the Canon 5D (cause was determined to be EM interference when the AF drive motor was running in "continuous" mode when the exposure was made).
In the case of the M8, the proximate cause is a bright light source against a dark background that spills brightness into surrounding dark pixels in a band across the frame. Several theories as to the technical reason this happens have been bounced around, but none is confirmed.
Best I've seen so far is: a timing issue that leaves some of the silicon "gates" between pixels open at the wrong times in the process of reading the individual pixels' brightness in the instant after exposure. Sort of like a canal with all the lock doors left open - instead of each lock having a discrete level of water in it, all one sees is a continuous rushing river through all the locks downstream.