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"Media powerhouse News Corp is run by Rupert Murdoch. It owns - among other things -- Harper Collins, the \nWall Street Journal, 20th Century Fox, Hulu, MySpace and a host of other media outlets. Now News Corp and its MySpace CEO suddenly part ways. Why?"

Current fair use law is hazy by design; instead of laying out specific use cases, the law relies on the famous "four factors" about the purpose of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount borrowed, and the effect on the value of the original work. This can be maddening in many situations, because it is impossible to know in advance if a particular use qualifies. On the other hand, it gives a fair use incredible flexibility to adapt to new circumstances like the advent of the VCR. But in the paragraph that comes just before the four factors, Congress did see fit to lay down a nonexclusive list of fair uses: "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research." Is it time for more list items? The new Copyright Reform Act, proposed by Public Knowledge, would make a deceptively simple change to bring fair use into the 21st century-add seven words to this list. The CRA is a new project from Public Knowledge, with much of the heavy lifting being done by the Cyberlaw Clinic at Stanford and the Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC-Berkeley. While Berkeley's noted copyright scholar Pam Samuelson works up a new "model statute" for copyright law in the digital age, Public Knowledge hopes to make smaller interim fixes to copyright law that won't require the same dramatic reworking.

In the first case of its kind, an Australian court has ruled that an internet service provider cannot be responsible for illegal downloading. iiNet, Australia's third largest ISP, was taken to court by a group of 34 movie production houses. The group included the Australian divisions of Universal Pictures, Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox. They claimed that iiNet was guilty of copyright infringement for not preventing illegal downloads of films.

More studios work to keep Blockbuster alive. Is this about quarterly earnings? Is this a messgae to Redbox?

Thanks to Fox News, strong DVD sales and a better performance from television stations, News Corp. reported a 10% jump in fiscal second-quarter revenue to $8.7 billion and big jumps in operating income at its movie and television studio and cable television group.

"Escalating its efforts to crack down on DVD piracy, Twentieth Century Fox on Thursday filed six lawsuits against several dozen people that the company said had sold DVDs containing an unfinished version of "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" and other counterfeit Fox titles."