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"Do American students have First Amendment rights beyond the schoolyard gates? The answer is yes and no, according to two conflicting federal appellate decisions Thursday testing student speech in the online world. "Ultimately, the Supreme Court is going to have to decide if there ever is a time students have full-fledged First Amendment rights," said Frank LoMonte, executive director of Virginia-Based Student Press Law Center. He's one of the attorneys in the cases the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided."

Op-ed arguing that allegations linking Net Neutrality and copyright infrignement are spurious. The piece illuminates interesting aspects of the debate, including the role of legitimate user generated content and as well as civil liberty issues.

"A patent application by Google (GOOG), filed in August 2008 and only made public last week, shows that the company is working on an automated way to split printed magazines and newspapers into individual articles that it could then deliver separately. Although this could allow Google to convert stacks of periodicals into electronic archives, it potentially sends the company headlong into conflict with a famous Supreme Court ruling on media law."

Exclusive output deals between HBO and three major Hollywood studios stand as major obstacles to a robust movie-dowload business, holding back a potentially lucrative distribution channel and creating conflict between the powerhouse divisions of TimeWarner -- HBO and Warner Bros. -- who for once find their interests at odds.

Berlusconi looks to regulate Internet video by banning the uploading of violent or pornographic content. The move raises issues of freedom of speech, technical challenges of such regulation, issues of jurisdiction, and media ownership and consolidation concerns since some of Berlusconi's channels offer pornographic content for sale.